The mass immigration of Turks and Moroccans was the result of rightwing policy, and it is also the rightwing parties that are now responsible an influx of badly-integrated East Europeans, declares Labour (PvdA) MP Martijn van Dam.
“Fifty years after the wave of ‘guest-workers’, a flood of East Europeans is currently underway. Contrary to what people came to believe, the migration wave of the 1960s was not leftwing but actually rightwing policy,” Van Dam wrote yesterday in an opinion article in De Volkskrant newspaper.
“Fifty years later, the rightwing shows it has learned nothing. Once again, the right wants to encourage immigration on the underside of the labour market, without wanting to invest in integration. It is shocking how history repeats itself.”
In recent years, the Party for Freedom (PVV) has succeeded in blaming the socialists for the immigration of the 1960s, says the PvdA MP. “For too long, leftwing politicians like myself have left these allegations uncontested. We found a discussion on whose ‘fault’ it is that people are living here extremely tasteless. That we should not have done. If you leave allegations uncontested, people take them to be true. But they are not true. Large-scale immigration was and is the consequence of rightwing policy.”
Van Dam is concerned about the inflow of East Europeans in the Netherlands. “In five years time, 200,000 to 300,000 came here. In The Hague, more East Europeans than Moroccans are already living there.” According to Van Dam, parties like the conservatives (VVD) and Christian democrats (CDA) nonetheless want “open borders again and generous allocations of work permits to Bulgarians and Romanians.”
“Being cautious with immigration and working hard on integration, with respect and decency regarding the people concerned: If we do not do this, then we will again be stuck with a gigantic integration problem in thirty years’ time.”