Verlenging naturalisatietermijnen

Reactie

Vraag1

Extending the term from 5 years to 10 years for Dutch citizenship is ineffective for helping new citizens become more integrated into society.

1. New citizens are already required to give up citizenship from other countries. Dutch citizenship cannot be collected with other citizenships and therefore is only for people who are highly motivated to be Dutch.
2. High earning, motivated professionals who have a choice of countries will take their knowledge, skills, and taxes to a country with a 5 year requirement.
3. The number of years someone has lived here does not directly correlate to how integrated that person is.

Alternative proposals:

1. Incentives for learning Dutch - Allow immigrants to earn citizenship sooner if they reach a higher level of language mastery. For instance, reduce the timeline to 2 years with C1 Dutch proficiency, 3 years with B2 Dutch proficiency, 4 years for B1 and 5 years for A2.
2. Provide resources and funding for learning the language - Dutch society values teaching the language to children, and it should provide an equal level of support to adults who are learning the language. Schools for children are free, but courses for learning Dutch are thousands of euros. Many language learning resources have mediocre materials for Dutch that often do not go past beginner level. Here are a few proposals: Provide free library membership to immigrants. Provide incentives to language learning platforms to invest in their Dutch courses (Babbel, Pimsleur, Duolingo, Memrise and most other language learning companies have amazing courses for German, French or Spanish, but when you switch to Dutch, the quality and amount of materials are severely reduced.) Provide subsidies to Dutch teachers and Dutch schools.
3. Provide inburgering advisors to all immigrants and not just those who are mandated to inburger.

For immigrants who are applying for Dutch citizenship, we are highly motivated to integrate and to become as Dutch as possible. Extending the timeline only serves to discourage and disenfranchise us. We want to participate. We want to vote and have representation. Adding 5 more years of insecurity and fear of the possibility of being deported back to our gebortelanden makes it more difficult to settle and become truly Dutch instead of easier.