Immigrants 'must be paid to integrate'
16 January 2003
AMSTERDAM — New immigrants should be allowed to decide where they complete a compulsory integration course and the government should pay EUR 3,000 to those who successfully graduate, Liberal Party (VVD) leader Gerrit Zalm said.
The publicly-funded, regional training centres (ROCs) presently have a monopoly on the provision of integration, or "inburgerging", courses. The students undergo a 600-hour programme consisting of Dutch language and culture lessons.
The ROCs charge EUR 6,000 per course and students who complete the course successfully are refunded half the cost by the government.
But speaking in an interview with the Algemeen Dagblad, Zalm said immigrants should be allowed to sign up with a private commercial organisation to participate in an integration course and that this would help stimulate immigrants to learn Dutch.
"It is primarily (the immigrant's) responsibility, not the government's," he said.
Allowing the private sector to enter into the market would also reduce the backlog in people waiting to undertake integration courses, he said.
Murdered populist politician Pim Fortuyn won a lot of support prior to the general election on 15 May 2002 when he said the Netherlands was full and the immigrants should be forced to integrate.
The integration courses focus chiefly on teaching Dutch, but not all newcomers to the Netherlands have to take a course.
Newcomers from EU member countries are exempted, as are Americans, Indonesians and Japanese. Just about everyone else — even if their parents were originally Dutch — is required to do the course.
[Copyright Expatica News 2003] |
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