Ayaan Hirsi Ali No Longer Dutch
Wed May 17, 2006 at 02:38:31 PM PDT
Though the Dutch parliament has insisted on an
appeal, as reported by Al Jazeera, the most famous Dutch politician outside the Netherlands was notified that she would be stripped of her Dutch passport because of a lie on her application for asylum. Ali used her grandfather's last name and an incorrect birthdate to prevent her family in Somalia from tracking her down and forcing her into an arranged marriage. However, this has apparently been public knowledge since her successful 2002 run for office and a subject she discussed while campaigning.
It's unclear why immigration minister Rita Verdonk considered this a pressing matter. Al Jazeera's report notes that Verdonk, a member of the same political party as Ali, has been jockeying to be the lead candidate in the next election cycle. Though considering the outrage over this step, while it's apparently in keeping with her hardline approach to rejecting as many asylum seekers and immigrants as possible, she may have lost that chance for good. And her misstep may end up, surprisingly, benefitting the American Enterprise Institute.
As Spiegel reports, whatever her current circumstances, she's
got plenty of bright prospects for the future:
... But it seems that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has already moved on. After an hour she returns to her guests and announces the good news. The US ambassador in The Hague, she says, has assured her "that he will do everything in his power to help me move to the United States." In fact, the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, has already offered her a job. ...
So, it looks like we might have a prospective citizen here in the U.S., and all to the good. It isn't every day that a dark-skinned third world asylum seeker from a muslim country gets red carpet immigration service. And considering that the reason for that is largely the influence of the Republican party and the media power of groups like the AEI, I'd be disappointed to see her end up as another right wing token spokesentity.
Indeed, while the AEI has a persuasive and thoughtful body of pro-immigration work, their network of allies on the right have gained much of their power and influence by pandering to and inflaming exactly the sort of xenophobia that's been increasingly gripping the Netherlands. Witness Lou Dobbs, the Minutemen, Bill Frist and Michelle Malkin. Alarm over immigration has been a recurring theme in European political debates and was brought to a frenzy among the Dutch following the high-profile murder of Theo Van Gogh by a muslim angry over a film he produced critical of Islam, and in which Ali appeared, building on the public shock over the assassination of politician Pim Fortuyn for his ardently anti-immigrant and anti-muslim political views. As the Al Jazeera story notes above, polls indicate that 49% of the Dutch public agrees with the decision to revoke Ali's passport, reflecting serious disquiet about the immigration issue that Verdonk was doubtless hoping to capitalize on.
It's a rare person with the capacity to both become fluent in a new language as an adult and assimilate into another culture so well that you can pursue a career in politics in an adopted country. While I'm glad in any case that America seems likely to take her in, it would be nice to see a progressive organization step up and try to recruit this intelligent and mediagenic woman. She could make the case for welcoming immigrants, preferably on behalf of the side in the American political debate that supports their interests as a matter of policy, like no one else.
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