BROKEN GATES 'It just doesn't feel like Holland any more'

GLobe and Mail ^ | 04/23/05 | DOUG SAUNDERS

[Pikamax]

BROKEN GATES'It just doesn't feel like Holland any more' Troubled by the changes immigration has brought to their country, the van Ramhorst family is coming to Canada

DOUG SAUNDERS saysBy DOUG SAUNDERS

Saturday, April 23, 2005 Page A4

ROTTERDAM -- To a visitor, the village of Nijkerk looks like a model of Dutch calm and order, its neat streets filled with cyclists and lined with tiny townhouses.

But to Bert van Ramshorst and his family, the town no longer feels like home. Its citizens now come in a variety of hues and hold a wide range of beliefs, some of them deeply at odds with the pacifism and expansive liberalism that has long characterized Dutch society.

"I've lived here, in this town, almost all of my life, and it just doesn't feel like Holland any more," the 42-year-old electrical contractor said, as he took a break from packing to sit with his wife and three young children in their narrow, cozy living room. "It doesn't feel like the place where I want to raise my family."

So the van Ramshorst family, troubled by the changes brought about by immigration, have decided to become immigrants themselves.

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With their move to Vancouver this summer, they are joining an unprecedented number of people from the Netherlands who have decided, in recent months, to make a new home in what they see as the more comforting and less divisive Canada.

The sudden exodus to Canada has taken the Dutch government entirely by surprise.

During the past year, and especially during the past five months, the number of Dutch citizens applying to depart for faraway countries -- notably Canada, as well as New Zealand and Australia -- has increased to levels not seen in the tiny nation's modern history.

Most of those emigrants, according to the people who help them make their moves, are leaving because of their complex and surprising feelings about the changes to Dutch society brought about by immigration.

For some, the desire to leave is a response to the immigrants themselves, and what many people here view as their violent, divisive, non-Dutch ways.

But just as many Dutch immigrants seem to be alarmed that immigration has turned their countrymen into angry, intolerant nationalists.

In just about every country in Europe, immigration has become the most significant political issue, by far, in public opinion, media attention and parliamentary action. In Germany, France, Britain and Italy, immigrants have become the dominant election issue.

Faced with shrinking, aging populations and the attendant economic costs, most European countries are badly in need of immigrants. In some countries, this has led to culture shock.

The ethnic cleansing and mass migration of the two world wars left many European countries with one dominant ethnic group, so the presence of large numbers of visibly different people has alarmed and alienated many residents.

Nowhere is this being more strongly felt than in traditionally tolerant, open nations such as Britain and the Netherlands.

While both countries face severe labour shortages and therefore cannot give up on immigration, the public reaction to the demographic changes has been nothing short of fury.

In the campaign leading toward the May 5 national election in Britain, polls show that immigration is by far the most significant issue to voters of all classes and backgrounds -- outpacing by an enormous margin other hot topics such as crime and taxation.

Even the governing left-wing Labour Party has felt compelled to adopt the angry rhetoric of the anti-immigrant right, and has promised to cut back the number of refugees accepted (if not the number of immigrants).

In the Netherlands, the reaction has been equally heated. But there, people are voting with their feet.

"The entire society is changing and people are longing for the world of 20, 30 years ago -- some people believe they can only find that by leaving," says Frans Buysse, a former Canadian embassy employee who runs Holland's largest agency for people wishing to emigrate to Canada.

Mr. Buysse can pinpoint the precise moment when the Dutch outflow became a full-scale flood. On Nov. 2, the libertine filmmaker

Theo van Gogh was murdered in a bloody throat slitting by a Muslim extremist while cycling on an Amsterdam street. To outsiders, it seemed a strange, passing crime. But the Dutch responded, within their tight-knit community, the way some Americans did to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Suddenly, people were noticing immigrant crimes, and committing crimes against immigrants: December saw the firebombing of several mosques and Islamic schools.

During the next four weeks, Mr. Buysse received 13,000 on-line applications from people requesting information on moving to Canada -- more than four times the usual level. Since then, this increase hasn't stopped. And, he says, the thousands of people he has helped move to Canada during the past few years have mentioned either immigration, or intolerance resulting from immigration, as a reason for leaving.

"For certain people, Nov. 2 was a confirmation of their beliefs," he said. "As a society, we have always been very tolerant to people from other places -- for hundreds of years, this has been the case -- but we have become so tolerant that some groups are influencing society in such a way that it starts to become intolerant. People are fed up with this."

While Dutch emigrants cite numerous reasons for going to Canada, including job opportunities, a desire for adventure, and especially the wide-open spaces that are almost absent from the Netherlands, Mr. Buysse and other immigration workers say it is the tension over immigration that has pushed the emigrant numbers so high recently.

According to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, 49,000 people emigrated last year, the highest number since 1954 and a dramatic increase over approximately 30,000 in 1999.

But the statistics do not reveal the strange and often contradictory motives that are driving away thousands of citizens of the Netherlands, a country that has better standards of health care, education and social services and a lower crime rate than most Canadian cities.

The Dutch, a trading people, have had outsiders in their midst for centuries. And while the past two decades have seen a more open approach to immigration from non-European countries, something about this latest wave has deeply galvanized the country against immigration.

Some blame the Dutch policy of cultural segregation, where groups such as North African Muslims are allowed to attend their own schools and not encouraged to learn the local language or culture. Others blame the simple insularity of Dutch society, which forces newcomers into such enclaves, with little hope of wider acceptance.

For two computer technicians in Rotterdam, the problem has to do not with immigration itself, but with the Dutch response to it. In the view of Ge-An Van Rossum, 36, and her husband, Bas Rijniersce, 29, Canada is a place where the tension between immigrants and non-immigrants does not exist, because that distinction does not exist.

"Canadians are all immigrants," Mr. Rijniersce said from the austere living room of their flat in a funky corner of Rotterdam. "One or two generations back, they all emigrated from somewhere else. But here in the Netherlands there has been quite a lot of problems with this question -- integration doesn't work so well. In Canada it's worked better, though I don't know why. There's a little bit more tolerance between people than there is here."

For Mr. van Ramshorst, the small-town electrician, the problem is simply that Holland has let too many people in without any attention to their ability to fit into Dutch society.

"The last 10 years, our government's policy was to tolerate almost everything, and that's not good," he said. "There's law, and there's respect of the law, and you can't just let people do anything. Tolerance is very important, but we've reached the point where we're tolerating people who despise our way of life and want to damage it."

Those fleeing what they see as a degenerating society face difficulties with Canada's immigration system. Even for the well-educated Dutch, it takes two or three years to get an unsponsored application cleared, a tougher process than most people undergo to get into the Netherlands, although Canada takes far more immigrants, as a proportion of its population, than Holland.

This difficulty has become an inspiration for some in the Netherlands, who blame their country's ad hoc immigration system for the cultural clashes. Some favour adopting the Canadian system wholesale.

"We are only now beginning to understand that now we are an immigrant country, and that we therefore need an immigration law," Mr. Buysse said. "Canada has understood that for a long time, and its points system seems to be a good model for us."

So it may seem surprising, after all the effort and research involved, that both the van Ramshorst and the Van Rossum families have decided to settle in the area immediately around Vancouver. (Dutch immigration consultants say that Alberta and British Columbia are the two most popular destinations.) After all, this is a highly multicultural region that has had its own conflicts over assimilation and intolerance.

But both families said that they don't see this as a problem -- in fact, they see B.C.'s heavy immigrant population as benefiting them, as they, too, will be immigrants.

"There's a different social consensus in Canada," Mr. Rijniersce said. "People are more interested in becoming part of Canadian society, and nobody makes a big deal about their arrival."

Netherlands emigration

An unprecedented number of Dutch citizens are deciding to leave Holland and seek citizenship in Canada to escape what they see as at home.

Dutch-born leaving the country

1995: 38,507

1996: 40,365

1997: 37,849

1998: 35,778

1999: 35,785

2000: 37,414

2001: 39,380

2002: 46,631

2003: 45,946

SOURCE: CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION CANADA, STATISTICS NETHERLANDS

[Lancey Howard]

"We are only now beginning to understand that now we are an immigrant country, and that we therefore need an immigration law," Mr. Buysse said. "Canada has understood that for a long time, and its points system seems to be a good model for us."

Har!! Try the United States' immigration policy - - just stroll on in and head for the welfare office where they will give you a check, register you as a Democrat, tell you your rights, and give you directions to the schools, hospitals, and drivers license center!

[HostileTerritory]

Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are much easier to immigrate to than the U.S.

[Crawdad]

Wow. A real life 'Camp of the Saints'.

[wardaddy]

What do you mean THIS TIME homeo!


LOL

[wardaddy]

Hispanic is not a race doofuss so quit trying to act like one.

Aren't you an Hispanic chick anyhow?

[NeonKnight]

While both countries face severe labour shortages...

I'm not buying that one for a minute. If they have such severe labor shortages...then why do they have 7% unemployment?

[wardaddy]

I can tell you how this will end.

After I'm long since wormfood, the third world Muslim and otherwise will have overtaken the first and thru breeding primarily will obliterate the most successful societies thru sheer numbers and the world will enter a sort of dark ages again in which the third world is omnipotent and led by China or we will see a nuclear holocaust somewhere between the Paki-India_China axis.

A preexisting society simply cannot tolerate these cultural shifts on this magnitude and prevail intact.

We have increased our population by over 50% since the great relaxation of immigration of 1965. That's over 100 million through legal and illegal immigration and their offspring (accounts for 80% of the gross, the other 20% is native) and mostly from very different cultures.

At this pace, this country as we know it...and that is the key....will disappear before the eyes of our grandchildren.

It's that simple. And a few here think that is either "no big deal" as long as an (R) can be elected...and the chance of that will become slimmer and slimmer or some here celebrate this anyhow....

It's the demise of the gringo and they love it cause they have their own dog in the hunt.

[kittymyrib]

When the last Dutchman leaves, breach the dikes.

[Nea Wood]

What are we expecting? The same thing is happening here in the good old U.S. of A.

Exactly! Every time one of these articles about Holland is posted, the responses are the same. "Serves them right!" "What did they expect?" "Why don't they stand and fight?" Etc. Everybody looking down their noses at the stupid, cowardly Dutch who deserve what is happening to them. As if we are any better here!! We are committing the same suicide. The only differnce is, we still have some room to run to. Californians have been fleeing to the suburbs, or to other states, for a while now. That's how Americans are dealing with immigration. They are simply moving to other parts of the country to escape it. But we won't be able to flee forever. Sooner or later we, too, will run out of room to run. Then what?

[Nowhere Man]

I can tell you how this will end.

After I'm long since wormfood, the third world Muslim and otherwise will have overtaken the first and thru breeding primarily will obliterate the most successful societies thru sheer numbers and the world will enter a sort of dark ages again in which the third world is omnipotent and led by China or we will see a nuclear holocaust somewhere between the Paki-India_China axis.

A preexisting society simply cannot tolerate these cultural shifts on this magnitude and prevail intact. We have increased our population by over 50% since the great relaxation of immigration of 1965. That's over 100 million through legal and illegal immigration and their offspring (accounts for 80% of the gross, the other 20% is native) and mostly from very different cultures.

At this pace, this country as we know it...and that is the key....will disappear before the eyes of our grandchildren.

I fear the same thing as you. I don't know how old you are but I'll be 39 in July. I do really think we will see an atomic war in the future and this issue between the have and have not nations will fuel it. I was discussing this with my father and we were talking about how Red China is eyeing the rich resources of Russian Siberia. With 1.1 billion Red Chinese vs. 150 million or so Russians, well if they get into a war, my father said, "the Chi-Coms will overwhelm the Russians." I said to my father, "if I was Russia, I would have to resort to atomic weapons to hopefully stem the tide." I think massive move of this much humanity would make the much feared Soviet invasion through the Fulda Gap look like a picnic. Even if the CONUS isn't nuked, we might have to worry about fallout from over there coming here and raising the background radiation count. I remember when I was a kid when Red China was lighting up nukes, they taked about the fallout circling the Earth twice, Strontium 90 in milk and so on.

Getting back to the issue, a nation cannot survive as it used to if they keep taking in immigrants who will not assimilate to the host nation. Yes, it is good to think back to your roots and remember them and be proud of them. Here in Pittsburgh, we have Polish, Italians, Germans, Russians, Serbs, Hungarians, and so forth looking back to their homelands and celebrating where they came from. However, at the end of the day, we are all Americans. I see it happening with more recent immigrants that they do not see themselves that way, but as we have seen, it is a lot worse in Canada and Holland. I'm glad to see them waking up in Holland, but is it too late? Time will tell, but I do think the world will have one huge war and we will be set back several hundred years to start over again.

This is much more beyond a Democratic or Republican issue, in fact, I'm losing a lot of faith in the Republicans. The Democrats are a lost cause with the barking moonbats running the show, but the Republicans are appearing to be spineless gutless wonders. Gutless wonders are just as bad as the barking moonbats.

I know we need to control our borders and make it easier for people to have babies and teach them our values. That's the key to all of this. Like you, I'm afraid we are losing this country in many ways. FDeep down inside, I wish I could pick up an M-1 Garand or a BAR (M1918A2) and give it a good fight or drive an M-48 tank on the Mexican border, but we are so limited, we can do that, at least on our own although I do admire the Minutemen down there. I really feel sick and hurt so many ways that we are losing the America and the world we all know. Heck, I often semi-joke, "I miss the Cold War." B-P

[crabapple joe]

Sooner or later we, too, will run out of room to run. Then what?

Sooner or later all the white/western civilization folks will keep running until we all end up in Kansas...maybe then we will realize we are giving away the greatest country/civilization the human race has ever created. Unfortunately, it will be too late and the world will descend into another dark ages. You simply can't keep importing the gene pools that created Mexico City, Lagos, The Congo, etc. and expect a different result.

[A. Pole]

I think massive move of this much humanity would make the much feared Soviet invasion through the Fulda Gap look like a picnic.

Chinese do not like to live in the cold north. Hey they even migrate from northern China south and east.

Same like in America - people move from rural areas into densely populated coasts.

[kingattax]

Yes we Hispanics are going to inter-marry with the white chicks.... are you scared?

Here ya go, amigo. You can start with Mabel here and we'll keep em comin'...Congratulations

[Porterville]

Don't tell me about my race and what it means. Are you some kind of Lesbian? I thought you were a french woman?

[Porterville]

By the way, don't insult me next time. I could think of a lot of things to tell a french woman but it wouldn't be poite.

I assume you can read, so read this it is from the dictionary.

His·pan·ic ( P ) Pronunciation Key (h-spnk)
adj.
Of or relating to Spain or Spanish-speaking Latin America.
Of or relating to a Spanish-speaking people or culture.

n.
A Spanish-speaking person.
A U.S. citizen or resident of Latin-American or Spanish descent.

---

[Latin Hispnicus, from Hispnia Spain.]
Usage Note: Though often used interchangeably in American English, Hispanic and Latino are not identical terms, and in certain contexts the choice between them can be significant. Hispanic, from the Latin word for “Spain,” has the broader reference, potentially encompassing all Spanish-speaking peoples in both hemispheres and emphasizing the common denominator of language among communities that sometimes have little else in common. Latinowhich in Spanish means "Latin" but which as an English word is probably a shortening of the Spanish word latinoamericanorefers more exclusively to persons or communities of Latin American origin. Of the two, only Hispanic can be used in referring to Spain and its history and culture; a native of Spain residing in the United States is a Hispanic, not a Latino, and one cannot substitute Latino in the phrase the Hispanic influence on native Mexican cultures without garbling the meaning. In practice, however, this distinction is of little significance when referring to residents of the United States, most of whom are of Latin American origin and can theoretically be called by either word. ·A more important distinction concerns the sociopolitical rift that has opened between Latino and Hispanic in American usage. For a certain segment of the Spanish-speaking population, Latino is a term of ethnic pride and Hispanic a label that borders on the offensive. According to this view, Hispanic lacks the authenticity and cultural resonance of Latino, with its Spanish sound and its ability to show the feminine form Latina when used of women. Furthermore, Hispanicthe term used by the U.S. Census Bureau and other government agenciesis said to bear the stamp of an Anglo establishment far removed from the concerns of the Spanish-speaking community. While these views are strongly held by some, they are by no means universal, and the division in usage seems as related to geography as it is to politics, with Latino widely preferred in California and Hispanic the more usual term in Florida and Texas. Even in these regions, however, usage is often mixed, and it is not uncommon to find both terms used by the same writer or speaker. See Usage Note at Chicano.

[wardaddy]

I know you dear.

Hispanic chick claiming Gringos were mean to your kinfolks and so you have it in for us.

You are right. I am lesbian metaphorically.

Btw...I suppose the inherent racism in your "We're here for the White Women" dig totally escapes you.

I would enjoy seeing you explain to Cubans and Argentinians and Spaniards how they are a different race from 'Whites'.

Blinded by your own hatred you are dear.

As for chasing ladies of different cultures. I cut a pretty wide path myself once. No regrets. None of the latinas I knew had a chip like you got though....from Cali to Cordoba...lol

Guess it's a new generation thingie eh?

[wardaddy]

I'm 47. I got really two concise points on all this.

A) Times have changed, I haven't.

B) I tolerate individuals better than groups.

Kind Regards

[little jeremiah]

People sell their houses in CA for huge bucks, move to Oregon, buys a nice house with cash, live on the rest, while native Oregonians struggle with living in a commie state.

[dreammaker]

"Yes we Hispanics are going to inter-marry with the white chicks.... are you scared?"

Thanks for the dollop of incoherent sh*t-stirring irrelevance.

[cherry]

he should like Vancouver.....they have free drugs and are trying like mad to get whoring legalized, so these Dutch immingrants should feel right at home....

I have no sympathy for the Dutch......