Map (IND's): Spread of 3 Categories of Reception Centres Across the Length and Breadth of The Netherlands

Chukwudi Austin Anene                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Experiencing Germanic Europe:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Above the Alps, Below Sea Level-NL                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

 ISBN 978-94-6228-475-3

Preface

A modest man, an immigrant in the Netherlands, who in his own way reads much – knows the art of neither speed reading, the attendant so-called skimming and chunking nor slow reading, but perhaps knows how to put two and two together on close reading. Chunking had come in useful in his language acquisition of Dutch. May 2013, Apache OpenOffice captured his fancy as a freeware. He downloaded the Writer and the coast is clear for him to get down to business as a writer. The writer had since 2003 nurtured the idea of writing a book on someone's experiences.

I am the writer. Ever since that time, now ten years on, I've improved on the materials at my disposal since the spring of 2000 when I first arrived and was admitted in the Netherlands. Shortly afterwords I began with annotations and subsequently my freewriting. The materials are not all original research, they include some public domain resources, public sources or publicly available information. Reliable sources coming into play.

My intellectual honesty nonetheless intact. I worked hard and even fanatically all those years to gather more information and gain more insights, reading much of all newspapers in print media and keeping track of and tabs on all news in electronic media and on broadcast stations – locally, regionally, all-important nationally and internationally. I've done my research well, re-invigorating, from the end of Jan. until the end of March 2013. The next month of April, I began to convert my voluminous free writing and manuscript from paper to digital; translating it from largely Dutch into English, commencing writing in the process. It would take me 3 months, it turned out. A manuscript that for years threatened my will: making a book out of it one day. Further writing, discarding and rewriting will last down the year. Book writing in earnest, editing and proofreading would take me 9 months in all. In 2011, I attended a course on writing – lessons given to immigrants with higher education towards integrating them into a knowledge-driven Dutch economy – and I continued with that as an autodidact that I think I am. It pivoted around plain language, the active voice and passive voice equation, and all that. George Orwell in his essay, Politics and the English Language, provides six rules for writers. I've taken those into account. Playing fast and loose with it somewhat. I for one have the propensity for verbiage, and I've since offered to be disabused of that. I would be a bit stinting with citations and citing sources in this text, like parenthetical referencing – flouting some conventions tied to them, while guarding against a demise in the face of literary appreciation.

A this stage, I've become a permanent resident of this Germanic European country – one of the most modern countries on earth. In this non-fiction novella on Cee, an African immigrant here in the Netherlands, I narrate his experiences from that perspective, virtually like no-one else and to the best of my skills. I strongly trust that this book reads well. I appreciate you reading. –C. Anene, NL.

Author's Note

Chukwudi Anene, a first-time writer in this non-fiction – novella – delves into Cee's fourteen-year experiences in the Netherlands. Cee, an African asylum-seeker-turned-immigrant in the country largely lying below sea level; inhabited by some of the Germanic peoples, the Dutch. In his West-African home country Cee, as a young man in his twenties, had never thought of himself one day becoming an asylum seeker far away in a foreign land. But he had once, while giving a little thought to a contingency of emigrating – in part influenced by the trend sweeping across the part of the world he hails from, wondered what he would pursue should he ever find himself over there. On the ground, however, he isn't idle; he's a trader, one seeking to become a full-fledged businessman – just as ambitious in that regard as very much every other fellow among his peers – although he isn't quite sure he possesses the requisite talent. He's already making headway in the mid-1990s from his periodic business-trips to foreign commerce-countries like Turkey and, granted he could obtain the scarce visa, Italy, in the footsteps of his older brother and head-start benefactor who started plying such business-routes – hauling foreign goods into their emerging market. It would seem to him that a walk of life like the academic's one will serve him more appropriately, and he's not missing out on activities pertaining to sociopolitical issues. Himself a young man of Christian walk.

Returning from a business-trip to Istanbul, he's placed – by minions of the military regime they live under – from their gateway airport under what will be established by the court of law, that he turns to, as an unlawful and dehumanizing year-long detention, and as a result attracting punitive damages which the regime would disregard anyway, flouting a court ruling.

Arriving in the Netherlands as an asylum seeker Cee sees an opportunity to pursuing his academic ambition, developing a high level of interest in ways that are capable of advancing his vision of a knowledge-based future – starting from studying the language and culture of the land. Alas, hamstrung by prevailing policies. Cee would, in the process, witness a flurry of activity and the defining times in the Dutch asylum, immigration policy, noting down vital information and the policies' taking of shape every step of the way as they affect him personally, emotionally, and also as they affect asylum seekers collectively and the larger immigrant communities. The defining times as not just restricted to the above-stated policy but as they bring themselves to bear on the country: socioeconomic, political, judicial, but also personally psychological to Cee – the latter aspect informs Cee's story, as he hadn't 'skipped a single rank' in the procedures mapped out by Dutch authorities toward obtaining the country's papers.

As he got over the several hurdles, Cee wouldn't skip any important events in the country, either. Focusing not necessarily just on personal encounters but on other experiences as would relate to a narrative non-fiction that passes for a publicly-digestible story, text, to be reckoned among books on the Netherlands in some social-science aspects – to access it, however, some meteorological notes.

CHAPTER I:

Weather Records and Fickleness

Cee Learned that Nicolaus Cruquius – a water taskmaster – started officially the systematic weather records in the Netherlands in the historical Dutch town of Delft in 1706. The first to do so in the Low Countries.

CHAPTER II:

Culture

CHAPTER III:

The Hague Revolutionized

CHAPTER IV:

Asylum Seekers and Immigrants

The Council of State, on Nov. 19, 2004, stipulates that every asylum seeker can appeal an asylum refusal if the person concerned had written a letter as of early 2003 to the immigration minister – the current one or her predecessor. Every letter should be seen as an official asylum application for which the applicant can put up a defence should it be met with yet another refusal from the department. At this point, the current minister is in receipt of 2,350 of such objectionary letters.

The Refugee Council reports that up until now, 349 people have as yet been granted a permit to stay as a result of the minister wielding discretionary powers as provided by law. The council of ministers at this stage wants to take measures that would take effect from March 2005 to contain a continued inflow of such letters. At a Cabinet meeting – Cabinet meeting in the Hague usually takes place Fridays – in the third week of this given month, the ministers decide to take these measures:

1. Legal charges to be paid going forward for the processing of that form of appeal;

2. Possession required of a temporary immigrant authorization visa from the Dutch embassy in the applicant's country of origin.

Extremely hard conditions to be met by an asylum seeker, the Refugee Council criticizes.

Cee won't let a catalogue of topical news, issues or numbers elude him, and it's April 26, 2005: From the 26,000 failed asylum seekers, 10,000 cases have been reviewed and 4000 are reconsidered. 6000 rejected. 4100 people, accounting for 41 percent of the reviewed files, have as yet been given permit to remain in the Netherlands. 59 percent or 5900 people under review have been rejected irrevocably. 2400 people out of the 5900 have actually been repatriated. Those who co-operated with government toward repatriating them received compensatory money in repatriation bonus for a head start and re-settlement in their respective home countries. The money involved is to the tune of €2,320 per person and €6,000 per household of 3 or 4. 3500 from this subgroup have reportedly disappeared. The IND will still review the remaining 16,000 individual cases. The remaining 16,000 failed claimants are those asylum seekers who from the outset fall under the old Aliens Act that was in force until April 1, 2001 and are now more or less rejected. 175,000 Dutch people are meanwhile signatories to a petition to the Queen, driven by one Heleen, suing for amnesty. Opinion poll has it that 55 percent of the Dutch disapprove of a general pardon, whereas 44 percent favour that for the aliens. A scientific poll. Another 63 percent agree to an accommodating treatment of these registered foreigners in the land. 32 percent want a rather stringent approach. Both camps find a common ground in the repatriation of the people. A new Cabinet has yet to take shape in 2005. Number has totaled up to 400 people whom the immigration minister using the discretionary powers has granted papers to stay on the grounds of poignant cases. One of the 2350 letters is Cee's, but it's been dashed.

***

A Total Institution, the Stifling Regimen and Spectre of Racism

Restrictive, dissuasive, cold-hearted, mentally misguiding or distracting. These are some of the adjectives that capture the Dutch government's policy brought to bear on asylum seekers, and empirically qualify it. A female Minister of State from the centre and confessionalian ChristianUnion party speaks against this backdrop in such a serious vein as:

"It teaches you the lesson that you don't obtain asylum in the Netherlands just like that." – Tineke Huizinga.

The above-quoted soft-spoken lady who, criticizing the immigration minister and her department's modus operandi at the height of events heated up by Iron Rita's ambition, makes no bones about it comparing IND's expulsion practices to Nazi-methods. As a Socialist Party member likewise likens the IND to 'the Dutch police going about with Jews in World War II collaborating with the Nazis.' The department and the minister would take umbrage at that, and also not be hesitant to join issue with both persons on their incisive comments, dismissing the latter's as baseless, while falling out with the former for her criticism. Even immigrant communities have fallen upon sobering days in which they are adversely affected in the scheme of things surrounding inhabitants other than natives. The term native-born undergoes the narrowest definition. Strictly defined in terms of being born of parents who have been Dutch and white for generations. June 2006: a scientific survey shows over 25 percent of the Dutch population to be 'very negative' about the allochthonous people. 10 percent of the Dutch as being even 'pronouncedly racist.' Alongside the hard-core racists there's a larger group constituting 17 percent who admit that they are occasionally racist. Both groups are of the opinion that autochthonous and allochthonous peoples have to live 'apart.' And that the allochthonous population groups should not be brought into mingling with the 'superior' native Dutch. (Proponents of a segregated society. Apartheid is a Dutch word, and it literally means 'apartness'). One third of the respondents say they have become even more racist in recent years. Men are more racist than women. A survey taken under 1020 respondents by a research bureau, Motivaction on a scientific research assignment.

“It was inconceivable ten years ago in the Netherlands for someone to go over the top to be identifiable as a racist. I would counsel those people to look into the history book for once at what the effects of that can be.” On a related issue; “Dutch people have become harder and more coldhearted.” – Jan Marijnissen, Socialist Party leader.

''The racists are generally young and with low-level education to average training,'' another survey by order of regional newspapers gathered. Forming part of the larger 70 percent of the entire Dutch society without higher education.

Respondents, nearly 80 percent think that relations between the population groups were 'strained.' Respondents also of the same 80th percentile proportions think that the tensions in the multicultural society, the Netherlands had mounted in recent years. Racism manifests itself in both big cities and the countrysides in the same measure. Multiculturalism has been discountenanced. The survey reveals that a high percentage of the Dutch population thinks that it's no good. An echoed decrial. Racism, too, is to some degree echoed with regards to geopolitical happenings that are not in check.

It's the Spring of 2000, Cee and co-attendees of a small group of keen asylum seekers are present at an information meeting with a young smart Dutchwoman working in the facility presiding who in the process would put a question to them. "Are the Dutch nice people?" "Yes, they are," the attendees answer with conviction. A categorical answer, inspired by the impression they have got in the number of weeks they so far are in the country. "That's not true," refutes the lady. But Cee and others just cannot understand the negation at this stage. They disagree with her suggestion. When they are dispersed into larger society and just a few years on, it occurs to these individuals that the negation statement made then by the Dutchwoman at the meeting actually has a nucleus of truth.

Spectre of Racism

As you keep track of the news, you would learn one social issue or another erupting in one country and echoing in another within the surrounding countries in this part of the world. And geopolitics. Racism or decrial of multiculturalism has echoed here and there. The Dutch keep tabs on all. But here you have a set of sociocultural and socioeconomic excesses originating from within on Dutch soil, of all soils. You are at a loss at to whatever happened to the high degree of civilization. A civilized country. No slouch of a country qua image, in Cee's judgment.

Cee has on a personal level had some dealings with one such racist. A young Dutchman who deals on seafood. He hails from conservative Christian twin towns of Bunschoten-Spakenburg. A start-up who had obtained a credit line probably to the tune of €500,000. Cee patronizes him every Monday at the market square in a small town of Dongen, one of the communities where they pitch their stand weekdays on different market days one at a time. They have been somewhat on speaking terms. "I am a racist," he unabashedly says of himself while talking to Cee one day. But it's not a mere utterance; to Cee though, it isn't quite a bombshell, for his past utterances and behaviour had been the best predictor of this rather sordid and tacky comment. Best known to him whether by tabes he meant decline or something else. The literally fat-headed, and Cee would rather have that than being up against a skinhead, young man goes:

"Later you-all will become tabes [here], and we don't want that. Adolf Hitler did well, only that he made a little mistake." – Dries, Gebr. van Diermen.

With this brazen racist helping, Cee using a state-sponsored special bank card for asylum seekers one given day to pay serves to compound the resentment towards not just him but people like him as would be self-evident in this seller's negative attitude there over the counter. After giving it a thought in the following few weeks, Cee resorts instead to buying his fish onwards from a seafood shop located about 200 metres away from the community market, and sustains that option for a period over a half a year when he gets a phone call. It's Dries on the line saying "I haven't seen you patronize us for a long time now." Using the number Cee gave him way back. "I've left that to people who look like you. It's money ill-spent being there," Cee responds. He returns to patronizing the racist anyway. Better the devil you know.., they say. Coming to terms with entrenched spectre of  racism in some quarters, as immigrants better should.

Members of ethnic minority groups, Turks, Moroccans, the Surinamese, Antillians and Arubans who are among the service-members in the Dutch military and police at points in time are faced with much prejudice. They encounter discrimination regularly in a double-digit percentage from the ranks through the chain of command. The message from the natives couldn't be clearer. You aren't welcome. Survey further shows that:

''About three-quarters of the lower ranks of the military force hold a negative opinion

towards multicultural society. At the same time they have a problem with allochthonous colleagues. They are also against the participation of the allochthonous people in the military. And the clear majority of the military top brass share their view. 54 percent find that allochthonous people weaken the unity of 'our country' [the Netherlands].''

'One in five of non-native constables wants to leave the police, among other reasons because they have slim promotion chances and because of negative debates and discouraging factors.'

''Institutional discrimination. Non-native constables being often passed over in the Police Corps. The police has to be seen to be a reflection of society. Non-native constables failing in their desire to make a career in the police.'' – Bert Poelert, Board of Commissioners.

Progressives find the survey outcomes "not surprising, yet indeed saddening." "Anybody who has once come into the wards knows that it's what obtains on the ground."

"Formerly people perhaps thought along the same line, but they swept it under the carpet. In recent years there has arisen an increasing atmosphere of 'I say what I want.'" – An observer from the national bureau for the fight against racial discrimination, who finds it to be disturbing.

The bureau against racism, Bureau Racismebestrijding says furthermore that:

''These manifestations are known to it and have been present here since 15 years now.

Adding that racism among the Dutch is structural, non-incidental. It has not started today and will also continue to manifest itself, unfortunately.''

"The notion that the Netherlands is such a tolerant country has taken a big blow by this survey." – Statement coming from the Muslim umbrella organization, Contactorgaan Moslims en Overheid (CMO), made by its chairman to whom the survey results are "excruciating."

The CMO represents estimated 500,000 Muslims and about 369 mosques in the Netherlands.  

The proportion of Turks in the Dutch population the a moment in time: 2.2 percent. That of the Moroccans: 1.9 percent. Reported on reliable authority like the Netherlands Broadcasting Foundation (NOS), the Dutch public service broadcaster. The Dutch Muslim population has been 'intrapolated' and revised downward at 850,000. A more reliable number. From a more accurate survey. 5 percent lower than the one million it's hitherto been estimated at. The 150,000 margin is attributable to people from the same regions but are non-Muslim. Statistics Netherlands just about the same moment in time reports: 12,000 native Dutch are Muslim.

There's an immigrant woman, born in Turkey in 1969 of Turkish parents with whom she migrated to Holland in 1980. She has lived in the Netherlands for 26 years. She is a cabaret artist, columnist and a writer. She heard to satiety such chants as "bugger off, disappear, go back to your own country, and all that" addressed to her by racists who are more vocal. She arrived at a conclusion to indeed go back to her native land. Both her parents are deceased. Mother died way back in the 1980s. Father, a mathematics teacher to Turkish immigrant school children, has been dead a couple of years back by 2006. A mother, wife of a half-Turk and half-Englishman of whom it's said that he likes the system in the Netherlands where 'the rich and the poor attend the same school.'

"The most of allochthonous people in Britain are rich through which they are seen as a catch [assets]. The allochthounous people in the Netherlands are largely poor by which they are seen as freeloaders [trencher mates]," according to a Dutch print media outlet.

The understanding as upheld by the Turkish woman's husband isn't just interesting but wonderful to appreciate provided the context of the following topical content in italics is taken into account.

The number of black schools in the Netherlands has fallen in recent years, but the existing black schools have become even blacker. Black schools are schools for allochthonous Dutch children. Dutch RTL 4 reports on July 10, 2006. Number of black schools on the increase. The number of elementary schools with more than 70 percent allochthonous pupils has slightly increased from 322 in 2002 to 337 in the school year into 2006. A survey done by the Dutch newspaper Trouw shows. Truly, for the first time in ten years the number of black schools with 50–70 percent allochthonous pupils has slightly decreased (from 580 in 2002 down to 536 as of the summer of 2006) but also increasingly less white pupils register at these same schools.

According to researchers, already the schools with more than 90 percent allochthonous school children in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Hague are no longer an exception.

The progressives' view and idea point the way to integration, they insist that the solution lies there. They argue that the integration of allochthonous population groups offers a solution to the polarization in society regarding their presence.

Oprah Winfrey’s words come to mind: "Problems, if not solved become a crisis; crisis, if not controlled becomes a disaster." Integration disaster or failure in this case. Perhaps there's an ongoing government's shambolic effort to deal with this form of crisis. Voices from there cite the survey that gathered that there's more racism in other European countries. ''The so-called fierce course of action in government circles that's criticized as being a connivance is designed in no way to make racists feel that discrimination is condoned in the country,'' reasons one of the voices.

If the economy sagged, racism gets to be on the increase. 1995: the Dutch have money like water and there reigns a general optimism.

The Dutch would at some unguarded moments admit or cite the fear of influx of immigrants as the driving force behind the policy being pushed through that feels inhumane. They know full well that it's harsh, yet see it as much needed. You wonder what had become of the tolerance the Dutch are historically known for. Also in terms of being in the habit of not judging people by themselves, but instead having the knack of valuing people on merit as in respecting their dignity. Holland, a heaven for refugees. Age-long traditions or repute under pressure and even being rapidly eroded. Sacrificed by a groundswell of discontent on the altar of such a saying as 'desperate diseases require desperate remedies.' But to impugn their motives they would dismiss their asylum claim, saying in a rather guesswork that more than 8 out of 10 of these people are not real refugees. Neither in the sense of the Dutch Aliens Act nor in that of the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (CRSR).

"We have a tradition that has run through centuries of being welcoming and a heaven for Refugees. Refugees like Baruch Spinoza, the Huguenots, you name it! Now we tell the world that we are not like that." – Mayor Geert Dales.

It would seem a bit complex, elusive, to quantify such a resistance with a vengeance of the asylum seeker as to which is more potent, whether it be social, political or both – plus yet other motives. The government has double moral standards. 1. the warm indulgence towards the Dutch. And 2. the as-strict-as-possible, thinking-along-fixed-lines approach on immigrants, asylum seekers and those other admittance-seeking incomers. Much to the jubilant approval of its full-blooded Dutch citizens.

***

Pervasive Sentiments

There's, by 2006, a middle-aged Dutchwoman devoted in her business engagement of baking and selling seasonal doughnut balls and a few other items of Dutch relishing morsels in the beautiful traditionally Dutch built mobile stall strategically stationed in a T-junction in downtown Dongen. She had not just been business-like but all smiles and so friendly towards Cee and tends to remain so each time he turns up for some olie bollen that he relishes. She is assisted or substituted sometimes by her husband or daughter. Around the noon hour one day, Cee turns up to get the Dutch specialty and to go nibbling and then lap it up for a snack. The lady asks him whether he's on a lunch break. Cee answers in the negative, saying on the contrary that he has come from the asylum seekers centre lying about 500 metres in the direction behind his back. A game changer. All that she so far has offered to be up to that passes for nice and warm treatment sets in to vanish like snow before the sun; even her countenance betrays what might be going through her head.

Cee turns up the next time, this time, however, the pendulum has swung to completion regarding how he is viewed. He has apparently lost his dignity. Her daughter asks Cee about the 'hut' he lived in back in Africa. But Cee would not be intimidated, and he says to particularly the daughter: "You are ignorant. But we also live in a well-constructed house down there where I come from.'' ''No, our houses here are better,'' the mother refutes, as her daughter stands agaze, seemingly a bit petrified from Cee's comment. ''They might well be better here, particularly your buildings, but your residential houses are not better or more beautiful than our modern homes down there,'' Cee speaks up. ''I intend to write a book and this little encounter can be contained in it,'' remarks Cee as he then proceeds to partaking his, literally, oil balls. At his leave-taking, the mother with a note of concern in her voice as in appealing to be exculpated or spared says: ''Don't write about us in your book.''

Cee still in town would keep going there anyway in season for what he had known from way back as puff-puff. And Cee will go on a few years later to hear another comment he would weigh against this. From a double-faced, equally middle-aged Dutchwoman, volunteering at reception centres, subjectively and with a trace of malice contending in Dutch to the effect: "You may well write a book, but blossoming into print, you won't find a willing publisher, for what you wrote on." To which Cee raises eyebrows reflecting upon. "You don't fit-in in a box, being pigeonholed," she once stressed to Cee about him. The former's take, 'not to be contained in the book,' is only but music to ears in comparison. Of entire Dutch society record holds that 30 percent hold academic degree or vocational university diploma. You would assume much more a figure than that. The likes of the two persons described here as double-faced, who are bogged down by sentiments, don't usually belong in the category of degree or diploma holders who tend to be progressives and stand above petty concerns.

Similarly, among the southern neighbours, here's the situation: ''Most Flemish youth [of Belgium] are aversed to immigrants. Half of the Flemish youth finds that immigration has to come to a halt for tensions to reduce. Nearly as much youth think it's better for a country if nearly everybody shared the same customs and traditions. Three-quarters say to want no relationship, to not want to associate, with a black, Muslim or immigrant.'' A youth survey in Belgium shows, conducted under the management of professor Marc Hooghe of Louvain. Published in October 2006. ''The respondents are ten thousand young people of 16 and 17 years of age. The Flemish youngsters think for instance that 35 percent of the country's population is consist of foreign-born people in terms of immigrants, two to three times the real percentage. Girls score even higher, and that suggests the idea to the researchers that this group feels even more threatened.''

***

Feeling Threatened

Fear and uncertainty. The Dutch are afraid. Fear about their own identity and about keeping it with regards to immigrants. Uncertainty about their future and that of their children, fearing that their children will not have as much good life as they themselves have enjoyed and that they will thus be worse off...

CHAPTER V:

Above the Alps, Below Sea Level NL

CHAPTER VI:

The Phenomenon on the Political Stage, Iron Rita Herself

CHAPTER VII:

The Long Road to a Solution

CHAPTER VIII:

A Change in The Hague

CHAPTER IX:

The Ship of State and the Economics

CHAPTER X:

Contact and Crucible

CONCLUSION:

Fairness and Equitability