The Dutch: Traditional, or Racist?

[pampango]

5. "11 percent of the population is foreign-born" - about the same as the US.

Wealthy and fast-growing in the years after World War Two, the Netherlands was a major destination for economic migrants from southern Europe, Turkey and Morocco in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2010, around 11 percent of the population was foreign-born, according to Eurostat. Most have acquired Dutch citizenship, a sign of the country's successful integration policies.

Out of a population of around 16 million people, more than 3.5 million are foreign-born Dutch citizens or the children of non-Dutch immigrants, according to the official statistics agency. The largest immigrant populations include those from Turkey, the former Dutch colony of Suriname and Morocco.

"Many Dutch people feel fundamentally threatened," said Laurens Buijs, a sociologist at the University of Amsterdam. "As if they feel Brussels, or the UN, want to take away who we are, our identity."

Such fears have boosted support for Geert Wilders, the populist anti-Islam politician who wants to stop immigration by Muslims as well as eastern Europeans, and wants the Netherlands to leave the euro and claw back powers from Brussels. He has even set up a website where people could file complaints about eastern Europeans.

There seems to be a bit of 'tea partyness' in most countries. "Many Dutch feel ..." that the EU "or the UN, want to take away who we are, our identity." Sounds like our tea party types who believe they are losing the country that they have always known. Like our TP'ers some Dutch have turned to right-wing, anti-immigrant populism to restore the past.