In Hassnae Bouazza's memory, learning to speak Dutch happened very suddenly.
“I
remember very vividly the moment that I realized that I had learned
Dutch,” Bouazza said. “I was playing with children at kindergarten. All
of sudden realized, I speak Dutch.”
Bouazza, now in her 40s, is
the youngest of seven siblings. Her family moved to the Netherlands from
Morocco in the 1970s after her father left Morocco to seek work in
Europe. In 1977, the rest of the family joined him and settled in a
Dutch village — the only immigrants to live there.
This Moroccan
family might have been called model immigrants, if the Dutch government
had a model in mind. As Dutch speakers, the family was different from
the vast majority of immigrants who moved to Dutch cities, but remained
largely separated from Dutch society.
“Nothing was done to
integrate them in the society,” said Ricky van Oers, an immigration law
professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen. “The authorities thought
too easily of asking someone to come over to work, stay for 20 years and
then go back.”
Large-scale migration
from Morocco to the Netherlands started in the 1960s under a guest
worker program largely geared toward temporary work for men. But many
immigrants decided to stay, and in the 1970s, family reunification law
allowed guest laborers to bring their families to join them.
When
Dutch officials realized that families from Morocco and elsewhere
weren’t returning to their homelands, they tried to get them to learn
Dutch. When that only partially worked — it was too late for many —
attitudes hardened.
Anti-immigrant sentiment increased
around Sept. 11, 2001, when a series of anti-immigrant political parties
started winning seats in Dutch elections. Today, the leader of that
faction is
Geert Wilders.
“There is a lot of Moroccan scum in Holland who make the streets unsafe,”
Wilders told reporters during the 2017 election campaign in which his party came in second.
Wilders
and his followers have pushed exclusionary language laws for
immigrants. That message is gaining popularity: The Dutch government
requires people who want long-term work permits to take private Dutch
classes and pass a language proficiency exam.
“If they don't pass
this exam within three years, they are fined,” Radboud University’s Van
Oers said.
“The Netherlands can be perceived as sort of a guiding
country. It is very proud to have taken up that role. And you see that
different European countries have copied the Dutch model.”
Those
efforts are also inspiring the Trump administration. In May 2019, the
White House proposed an overhaul of US immigration law that would
include language proficiency regulations.
“Future immigrants will
be required to learn English and to pass a civics exam prior to
admission,” President Donald Trump told reporters at the Rose Garden
announcement. Currently, there is no indication that Congress would pass
such a measure.
Read more at: The Netherlands to immigrants: Speak Dutch | Public Radio International
