Netherlands: Government Scapegoats Asylum Seekers

THE DUTCH parliament’s lower house voted on 17 February to
expel up to 26,000 "failed asylum seekers" over the next three years.
This cruel and inhumane policy has shocked and angered Dutch working people and
also many people across Europe.

Offensief, CWI Netherlands

The bill marks the most draconian asylum policy in Europe.
Many EU countries have strengthened anti-immigrant policies, including
introducing barriers to people seeking work from the ten eastern European
states due to join the EU in a few weeks. But the proposals of Jan Pieter
Balkenende’s right wing coalition government are the first to mean the forcible
ejection of refugees.

The bill to expel thousands of refugees, which has to be
passed by the upper house of Parliament, refers to asylum seekers who came to
the Netherlands before April 2001. Many of these fled the war torn areas of the
world, like the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Chechnya.

To send families back to these countries means deporting
them to poverty, joblessness, and conflict. Most of these states are without a
"functioning government" and are blighted by violence.

Human Rights Watch said the measures are a
"deportation law violating international standards".

Anti-immigrant feelings are whipped up by the right wing
parties in the Netherlands. Yet, in 2001, only 219 asylum seekers were granted
permanent residence in the Netherlands: the lowest figure in all European
states

The right play on the fears and grievances of Dutch working
people, who face worsening living conditions. The economy is nearly at a
standstill, unemployment is growing, and there is an acute housing shortage in
one of the most densely populated countries in Europe.

Despite the scapegoating of immigrants by the politicians
and media, large sections of the population oppose the legislation.

As the bitter fruit of the new bill becomes clear –
increased ethnic tensions, inhumane treatment of families – and the fact that
it will not be a solution to the Netherlands’ economic woes, many more Dutch
workers will oppose the government’s policies.

The acute social and economic problems are not the result
of an increase in the number of immigrants and refugees. It is the right-wing
coalition government which is carrying out the largest round of welfare cuts
since 1945, leading to increased poverty.

Pim Fortuyn policies

THE BILL on refugees is a crude attempt by the unpopular
government to disguise its anti-working class policies behind anti-immigrant
populism.

Until recently the Dutch capitalists encouraged
immigration, so as to fill the worst jobs when the economy grew and to push
down wages. Now that the economy is slowing down, the ruling class wants to lay
the blame on foreign workers. The government hopes this will divide the working
class and weaken its efforts to resist cutbacks.

Ever since the rise of the racist, populist Pim Fortuyn
List, which leapt to second place in the 2002 elections, the main parties have
adopted many of the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies and rhetoric of the
ultra-right.

Smaller parties, such as the Dutch Socialist Party (in
which Offensief, the Dutch section of the CWI, participates), Green Left, and
human rights groups, have attacked the bill.

Offensief opposes the bill and all racist immigration
policies. Local protest actions are developing and a national demo against the
bill has been called for 10 April.

The CWI in the Netherlands calls for a mass campaign,
uniting immigrants and workers, to oppose the government’s bill and the social
cuts.

Last year saw large scale protests against the cutbacks and
also a huge movement against the US led war on Iraq, which the Dutch government
supported and assisted. This shows that working people can be brought together
to fight the right-wing policies of the government.

It is essential that a united struggle also fights for jobs
for all, for a huge increase in funding to the welfare state, and for decent
and affordable housing. The wealth exists in society to provide these aims, but
it needs to be under the ownership of the working class – in a planned,
democratically run economy, under a socialist society.

www.offensief.nl