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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.
An MP of this party has claimed that holding two passports does not allowimmigrants to fully integrate into Dutch society and stated that "you arenot a real, complete Dutch person" if you have another passport. The same MPalso stated that immigrants tend to abuse the current dual-nationalitysystem by taking advantage of the social benefits of both the Netherlandsand their country of origin.
Currently approximately 65 percent of new immigrants have dual nationalityand in 1998, the government determined to reduce that number. But the schemehas never been reviewed since them and members of the government claim thatthe scheme has failed due to the high number of immigrants holding dualcitizenship.
As known, immigration is at present a hot topic on the Dutch social agenda,with the government deliberately and successfully reducing the number ofasylum seeker applications over the pass several years. Worries about ethniccrime rates that often feature immigrants participating in violent crimeshas created a community backlash against certain immigrant groups.
Integration aims are trying to be achieved through mandatory Dutch languageand culture lessons for new immigrants, but many speculate that more needsto be done to ease tensions between titular nationals and immigrants,whatever their nationality.
