When it comes to immigration policy, there are a few options available to you as the host country if the floodgates have been opened too far and the influx starts to threaten the fabric of the settled society.
You can strain the influx of future immigration — not putting stress on — by tightening the restrictions, or setting higher standards for what constitutes an “acceptable” immigrant. Many countries have done this in the past, whether the sieve was academic (minimum education standards such as eighth-grade-, twelfth-grade- or even graduate levels), skills (tradespeople or industry-savvy applicants such as carpenters, steelworkers, forestry specialists or computer programmers), and finally financial: people who have been successful in their home countries and raised their standard of living to the point where their arrival into the host country will not require financial assistance from the government or charity organizations and may in fact become employment creators. (One more is military service for younger men and perhaps women, too, but this approach is fraught with potential problems, which is why the .dotmil generally has fairly strict standards for foreign recruits, or else has a savage, no-nonsense approach to assimilation like the French Foreign Legion.)
When a nation like the Netherlands decides to apply tighter standards or even close entry altogether, you have to realize that even for the famously-tolerant Dutch, immigration has put too much of a stress on their society, both financial and more especially to their culture. Which is what is happening over there:
Prime Minister Dick Schoof has promised to take a tougher line against illegal immigration. The Dutch four-party cabinet has pledged to establish ‘the strictest asylum regime ever known’ to curb immigration.”
The surge in the number of immigrants seeking asylum in the Netherlands, estimated at around 40,000 a year, has put severe pressure on public services from housing to healthcare, fueling growing concerns about the country’s ability to manage the influx.
The ruling coalition in the Netherlands, which includes Geert Wilders-led Freedom Party, has taken a tough stance on immigration. The party is known for its controlled immigration stances, and has been one of the key drivers behind proposals to tighten asylum laws in the country.
Measures on the table include limiting applications for international protection, speeding up deportations and restricting family reunification for refugees under much stricter conditions.
The Dutch government, by the way, is not doing this voluntarily. Whereas the neo-socialist political parties had pretty much universal control of the polity in the past, the election of hardliners like the party of Geert Wilders has changed the political landscape, and government ministers now say things like “a clear mandate from the voters” when framing a tougher immigration policy.
The depth of feeling on this topic is that the Dutch, always the most quiescent of members of the European Union, are now stating quite bluntly that in order for them to enact these new immigration controls, they have to have control of their own borders — ditto the Germans, by the way — but the Dutch are even showing open willingness to leave the EU altogether if such control is denied them.
Note too that the Dutch government is framing this issue purely in terms of financial necessity, and are not touching the issue of non-assimilation. But the Dutch, always cosmopolitan a nation, are undoubtedly looking northward to see what the (also famously-tolerant) Swedes are doing:
Sweden’s migration policy is undergoing a paradigm shift. The Government is intensifying its efforts to reduce… the number of migrants coming irregularly to Sweden. Labour immigration fraud and abuses must be stopped and the ‘shadow society’ combated. Sweden will continue to have dignified reception standards, and those who have no grounds for protection or other legal right to stay in Sweden must be expelled.
And that’s not a news organization speaking: it’s from the Swedish government itself.
By “shadow society” they mean Muslim enclaves, who insist on setting up their own little state-within-a-state pretty much wherever they arrive, and whose establishment was made easy by Sweden’s traditional tolerance. Ditto the many crime organizations and drug cartels, who up until now have had it relatively easy.
Well, it appears that this tolerance has reached its limits, and because the Swedes prefer orderliness over chaos, they’re prepared to do what has to be done: reduce the influx, and expel the unwanted (being Swedes, they’ll pay these assholes over $30,000 each to leave, which gives you an idea of how much the unwanted immigrants are costing the government in terms of aid and policing).
It is in this light that we should look homeward, and think about Donald Trump’s promise that upon election, we’ll see the largest domestic deportation in history.
Let’s hope, and hope still more that when he reaches the Oval Office, this promise doesn’t suffer the fate of that “big, beautiful wall” from his last presidential campaign.
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