Anti-immigrants anger threatens Netherlands
Migration 13 March 2017The Netherlands has been relatively less involved in the situation of the mass immigration that neighbours had to manage. The Dutch took significantly fewer asylum seekers during the refugee crisis, and much of the country’s nonnative population settled in the Netherlands decades ago.
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However, to many Wilders supporters, the overall picture of a growing economy with a comparatively small number of recent immigrants is beside the point. “The main issue is identity,” said Joost Niemöller, a journalist and author who has written extensively on Wilders and is sympathetic to his cause. “People feel they’re losing their Dutch identity and Dutch society. The neighborhoods are changing. Immigrants are coming in. And they can’t say anything about it because they’ll be called racist. So they feel helpless. Because they feel helpless, they get angry.”
The anger is not solely of those that are poorer, less-educated, working-class areas where Wilders and his party first gained substantial support. It reached the middle class Many of Mr Wilders’ supporters have a deep-rooted sense-higher class, who also perceive that new, often Muslim, arrivals in the nation of 17 million are treated better by the Government than long-time residents.
Mr Wilders stresses that despite the drop in unemployment, the number of people eligible for welfare rose last year, a trend mainly driven by refugees granted residency permits. “Thanks to Rutte, the Netherlands has become the ATM for many immigrants,” Mr Wilders tweeted.
Clearly, Wilders and other parties in this election are exploiting divisions, turning people against one another for their own gain, bringing extremism to rise.
