Europe Immigration News

One of the majority parties in coalition, the Christian Democrats, haverecently proposed taking away the rights of immigrants to hold twopassports, citing the claim that this simply hinders the integrationprocess.

The new proposal would force any immigrant taking up Dutch citizen to giveup their former citizenship, including handing in their old passport to thegovernment authorities.

A petition in opposition to plans giving non-European nationals living inBelgium limited voting rights has been signed by 50,000 Belgians recently.

A committee has been formed comprising some members of the radical right"Vlaams Blok" party to speak out against voting rights for foreigners. Thecommittee claims that 50,000 actual signatures have been gathered to opposethe Government's plans. In addition to actual signatures, the committeeclaims that a further 8,000 text messages of support have been received andten thousand more people have actually signed the online petition.

Instead of completely closing borders to accession country nationals after 1May, when 10 Central and Eastern European countries will become full EUmembers, the Dutch government is simply considering imposing a maximum limiton the number of East European immigrants allowed to enter after accession.

The proposed restrictions include imposing the requirement of a work permitfor these immigrants, which means that a job offer and employment contractwill need to be in place before they would be able to come to theNetherlands.

In future, non-EU immigrants residing in Belgium will be granted the right to take up posts in the Flemish civil service on permanent contracts.

The Flemish government has today made a proposal to offer immigrants from outside the European Union a so-called 'job for life' at the local and regional levels in welfare service administrative departments in the northern state of Flanders.

The port city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands is trying to prevent underpriveleged immigrants from moving to the city by refusing public housing to anyone who does not earn a salary of at least twenty percent above the minimum income level. In addition to this, Rotterdam City Council aims to put a cap on asylum seekers who wish to become residents of Rotterdam.

Due to a recent community backlash against crime in the Netherlands committed by groups of immigrants, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner has come out in support of the idea of sentencing immigrant criminals differently from native Dutch criminals.