Verlenging naturalisatietermijnen

Reactie

Vraag1

Nationalization

Hallo,

Ik vind dit plan niet zo leuk. Ik ben een buitenlander in Nederland en ik wil hier leven met mijn gezin en vrienden. Het is heel werk om te doen! Ik vind het belangrijk om Nederlands te leren maar ik ben wel leren dus ik hop dat Engels is oké voor nu.

I have lived in Amsterdam now for about a year and a half. My wife and I have worked hard to move here. We are exhausting ourselves working full time while spending the weekends in Dutch language classes. This city is our home, we have friends here, we pay taxes, we shop at the local stores. We get excited when we successfully have a conversation in Dutch with someone and they don’t switch to English. There are so many wonderful things here that make it a lovely place to live. People from all over the world, good food, a city that cares and makes sure to make things human sized and walkable. We picked this place because we love it and want to grow old here.

We of course looked at other options, one being Denmark which has many of the same things we love about the Netherlands. But one of the reasons we decided against it was that they require 10 years for naturalization. If we’re going to live somewhere, contribute to the economy, pay taxes, and spend time and energy to integrate and make it our home. Why should we not have the right to become a naturalized citizen and have the ability to vote on what our tax money goes toward?

I understand the desire to ensure that people are committed to the country before giving them a passport. But Netherlands is already one of the few countries that requires you to give up any other citizenship to become a naturalized citizen. What more can I do than that? If you’re concerned about people not being well enough integrated there are other levers you can pull that don’t disenfranchise people. Changing the language requirements would be one, though you must recognize that learning the language is a huge time commitment and expense. We’ve spent thousands of euros on Dutch classes already and as you can no doubt tell, we’ll need to spend thousands more. Surely it’s more productive to offer free classes on Dutch and Dutch integration than to disenfranchise people who are already going to be required to give up their birth nationality to become Dutch.

Dankuwel voor lezen! Ik hoop dat je hebt een fijne dag!