The Brexit debacle continues, the Dutch government openly discriminates against UK citizens residing in the Netherlands, in their pending legislation before the Dutch Parliament, therein exposing widespread xenophobia. The truth is we should all be concerned about xenophobia and bigotry by governments, where there is clear evidence of the same, even if that government committing these human rights abuses is a European ally.
Most people when they think of the Netherlands think about beautiful landscapes, windmills and beautiful cities like Amsterdam, where it is believed the core of one of the great social democracies was created, rich in history in art, forward and liberal thinking, decriminalizing drugs and prostitution, but what if this idyllic view of the Netherlands reveals a Dutch government that has a mean-spirited side to it, there on display in plain sight for everyone to see.
“100,000 Dutch citizens in UK can apply for dual nationality
New law will protect citizens of Netherlands living in the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The Dutch parliament has voted to allow about 100,000 of its citizens living in the UK to apply for dual nationality if there’s a no-deal Brexit – but has decided not to extend the same unprecedented safeguard to British nationals living in the Netherlands.”
www.irishtimes.com/...
How would you feel about that? And about the fact that Brexit now has exposed that evil underside. You see despite the fact that the Dutch society is believed to embody all the things previously mentioned by many, the Netherlands is known to have doubtlessly the most restrictive citizenship laws anywhere on the planet earth.
So for example unlike in the United States, and other countries, a person born in the Netherlands cannot acquire Dutch nationality by being born in the Netherlands. What that means is there are people in the Netherlands born and raised, who have gone to school in the Netherlands and who have never known any other home anywhere else, who are not Dutch citizens and do not have the rights or privileges of Dutch citizens. This is well known so the Dutch when they talk about number of foreigners living in the Netherlands count these people as foreigners so as to distort to the uninitiated actual Dutch integration statistics. Everyone tolerates this because after all these people are foreigners aren't they. They are the other. If any of them ever dare to apply for Dutch citizenship, they have to first relinquish their birth nationality.
This also applies to not only the children of the immigrants but the immigrants themselves. Now with the advent of Brexit what that means quite literally and sadly is that even Dutch people living in Britain, who as they face an uncertain future cannot take on British nationality without first losing their Dutch nationality, which means they could never return home as Dutch citizens. But wait the image conscious Netherlands saw that this human tragedy unfolding in front of our very eyes was pulling out the ugly face of the Netherlands from the shadows into the daylight of the media, where its ultra-conservative dark underbelly was uncomfortably being exposed to sunlight and being sunburnt.
So it is for the first time in the history in the Netherlands a bill for dual citizenship was put into the Dutch Parliament. Amazingly enough the possibility of these people being able to take on dual nationality now may be effectuated, but wait what about the Britons in the Netherlands? For whom it would likewise be helpful to be able to mirror precisely the same type of relief being made available to them and there are 64,000 of them.
To them the Dutch government says no you can't have dual nationality, because we have reserved for the special case of our citizens in Britain only. They are a special case. So it is that while the Dutch government is quite happy to protect its own citizens through dual nationality legislation living in Britain, they will not extend the same protection to people who are British nationals living in the Netherlands, which is the mere opposite of what the legislation intends to do for Dutch nationals in Britain. As they say what is good for the goose is good for the gander, but you'd be wrong, because non-Dutch citizen lives don't matter as much to the Dutch Parliament, because after all they are foreigners. Perhaps they should all just go back home. They are lesser human beings by virtue of the fact they are not Dutch. They don't have the same legal protections under Dutch nationality law that are being proposed for Dutch people in Britain. Now if that isn't discrimination based on national origin, then what is... Well the simple fact is they don't care. They've never cared. Why should they start caring now.
“MPs on Tuesday voted in favor of giving tens of thousands of Dutch nationals in the UK the right to dual nationality if Britain crashes out of Europe.”
“The bill was drawn up by the Liberal democratic party D66 and originally included British nationals in the Netherlands as well. But they were dropped from the proposals because there was not enough support in parliament for extending dual nationality rights to them.”
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/11/mps-back-law-to-give-dutch-in-uk-dual-nationality-rights/
You may say to yourself this isn't right, this can't be, this is not the Netherlands I know. The land of good cheese, wooden shoes walking across huge tulip fields. Let's take the example of a Dutch citizen who is a long time resident in Egypt. They needed to come home to the Netherlands to attend a family funeral, only to find the Dutch ministry diplomatic mission to Egypt wouldn't issue her a passport until such time as she was able to prove she hadn't taken on Egyptian nationality.
The quote below completely destroys the image of the liberal humanitarian Dutch government facade as it clearly shows the extreme inhumane lengths the Dutch government is prepared to go to in enforcing what has to be one of the most draconian citizenship laws that may be seen to exist any where in the Western world. In doing so, we again see the evil underbelly usually hidden from sight of the Dutch state whose meanness level frankly goes straight off the scale and as such destroys the propaganda image of the liberal Dutch social state.
“One nationality only
Furthermore, the current Dutch government in the Netherlands has restated their preference for the "one nationality" policy, despite being the only one in the EU, with the exception of Austria.
In December 2016, Eelco managed to successfully help a Dutch woman out of Egypt. She had let her Dutch passport expire, and coincidentally, also her visa, when her sister passed away. The consulate refused to renew her passport, until she could prove that she had not adopted Egyptian citizenship.
It was only after Eelco communicated on her behalf with the Dutch ambassador, that the consulate issued her an emergency passport to return to the Netherlands, purely on humanitarian grounds. While it was too late for the funeral, she was immensely happy to finally be able to see her parents.”
www.iamexpat.nl/...
Again we see the ugly evil underbelly in conservative spite and meanness coming out. This case made it into the media as set out below. But no one cares because it is a flash in the pan here today, gone tomorrow.
In cases where the Dutch government cannot prevent dual nationality what they do in order to punish dual nationality is if a dual national ever allows his Dutch passport to expire, then the Dutch government automatically revokes their Dutch nationality. If that seems putative and too extreme to even be believable, there is another example of the case of Anthony Morskinkhof, a man born in New Zealand of Dutch parentage who lost his Dutch nationality simply because he hadn't renewed his Dutch passport in time. If you think this sounds too crazy, too evil and dark hearted to even believe, then just read the story for yourself.
“Anthony Morsinkhof, a Dutch New Zealander, said he was devastated to have his dual citizenship revoked without warning last year. The 58 year old said when he went to the Dutch embassy to renew his passport before a trip to Europe, the staff destroyed it because he hadn't renewed it in time.
Morsinkhof said he was born in New Zealand as a dual citizen and spent more than a decade living and working in Holland, which included serving in the Dutch army, as was compulsory for Dutch citizens in the 1980s.
"I have a New Zealand passport, but I've lost dual nationality, and with it the pension, healthcare, and my right to go and live back in Holland together with my family," he said.”
www.stuff.co.nz/...
Now you know there is another meaning the old saying of the Dutch treat.
Now the Dutch government will be quick to say of course they allow dual nationality. This will be in a clear case so as to mislead the uninitiated. There are some cases where Dutch nationality is transmitted by a Dutch parent to a child born outside the Netherlands, who also has a foreign parent concurrently, therein creating a dual national.
This however is something the Dutch government cannot control. So then Dutch nationality exists only in cases where the Dutch government cannot control it completely. There are nightmare cases that occasionally find their way into the newspapers, where persons of Dutch nationality, who come to the United States for protracted periods for whatever reason, if they lose their passport, then they must show the Dutch Consulate proof they haven't taken on US nationality.
If they cannot do that then they can be marooned in the United States or anywhere else in the world.
In a clear case where these cases find their way into the newspapers, but again that is just a flash in the pan, a one day story,, here today gone tomorrow, just like this article here that barely anyone will see and fewer will remember. So the human tragedy of pain and suffering described in this article tomorrow will be forgotten by the Dutch government, that is if a miracle happens and they look at this article even for a single day.
No one can remember the spiteful evil nature of the Dutch government, who if your passport ever expires while you are abroad may trigger an immediate loss of Dutch nationality.
Again these things seem impossible to believe about that wonderful country with beautiful tulip fields and great cheese, windmills and smiling people everywhere. So why bother to write this article why bother to report on human rights violations, foreigner discrimination by the Dutch government who provides foreigners categorically with unequal treatment when compared to their own citizens, as in evidence through the nationality laws, why bother. The answer is we have to stand up and call out human rights abuses wherever we see them, as it is said all that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to stand by and do nothing.
The European Union is quite concerned about this, as in evidence by the former Belgian Prime Minister turned EU MEP Guy Verhofstadt said,
“Everyone presumes the European Parliament will give automatically its consent to the Withdrawal Agreement. Not if the remaining problems with the citizens' rights are not solved first.”
https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/news/guy-verhofstadt-citizens%E2%80%99-rights-issues-must-be-resolved-brexit
This article has attempted to collect information not ordinarily easily available to you as the reader to ask you, if the Dutch state is involved in human rights abuses or not. If not, why not? It is all well and fine for us to become exercised about the human rights abuses of pariah states. The question is when there is evidence of human rights abuses by one of our allies, what do we do? Do we overlook it? The question is in the case of the Netherlands, what is the truth?
Is the truth that they have legalized discrimination and bigotry against foreigners to include their own citizens who may also hold foreign citizenships, or not, and if not, why not?
If North Korea was behaving this way, would we condemn them reflectively for committing human rights abuses? If so, if the Dutch state engages in human rights abuses, do we give them a pass, because the place is filled with tulips, rainbows and sunshine when they destroy people’s lives? Do we hold them to account at least in the media and open up an honest dialogue about why they think they can behave like this?
The real question that has to be asked for 2020 and beyond, do human rights still matter?
When you treat people differently and give them benefits purely based on their nationality, and withhold benefits from them again, purely based on their national origin. What are you really saying?
The Dutch parliament says, Dutch citizens living in Britain can have dual nationality but British citizens living in the Netherlands can’t, as victims of Brexit, that most of them weren’t even allowed to vote in. We stand by and sit and do nothing.
When we see dual nationalities having their citizenships removed because they did nothing more than to forget to renew their passports on time, or they can’t get back to their families in the Netherlands, even for funerals because of Dutch draconian citizenship laws and how they’re allowed to treat dual nationals. Don’t we have to ask, has Dutch xenophobia also been transmitted to dual nationals? If so what is this? Is it a sense of national pride or is it a national badge of shame? If we don’t speak out and say anything, who does that make us?
Isn’t it the truth when all that has to happen for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Shouldn’t we have learned about this only too well during World War 2 from the history of the Nazis?