Allochtonen Weblog Roundup

Allochtonen Weblog collects news about the immigrant community in the Netherlands. Here’s a few interesting stories they’ve had this week.

More Dutch kids are being abducted than are officially counted, according to the Organization for Stolen Kids (Stichting Gestolen Kinderen, SGK). The organization bases its count on reports of parents. For example, they report that 51 Dutch kids are living in Egypt after being abducted by a parent. The Justice Ministry only knows of 12 such cases. In Morocco SGK report 31 kids while the official figures only talk of 2. the number of abductions is growing yearly with 105 kids being abducted last year.

There were several stories of illegal immigrants being forced to return. For example, Hassina, a 14 year old who came 6 years ago to the Netherlands from Afghanistan. The gov’t has decided that its safe for refugees to return, however Hassina is afraid of a going to a country where women are oppressed and where she’ll have no chance of education and freedom. She runs her own blog (in Dutch) about her travails.

The 2nd story is that of Mohammed C., a Moroccan born in Holland who is accused of terrorism along with Samir Azzouz. He has been declared an illegal immigrant and a danger to national security. Unless the courts turn the decree around he will be the first Dutch born person to be expelled, possible because he does not hold a Dutch passport.

Dutch supermarkets are turning to the Muslim consumers. More and more supermarkets offer halal food, specifically meat and convenience foods. Muslims spend 34%-44% of their income on food, compared to only 20% by non-Muslims.

The Netherlands experiences race riots almost every weekend, usually unreported. The riots take place between extremist right-wing ethnic Dutch and Muslim immigrant kids. The riots usually start off as small fights after which both sides call up more people via SMS or internet and large scale fights ensue. According to research by right wing extremist groups, both sides are to blame. The gov’t is not really dealing with these fights and tends to ignore the extreme right wingers.

Last weekend a race-related fight in the Belgian town of Bruges, two immigrant kids were attacked by several skinheads. One of the immigrant kids is still in a life-threatening situation. Source: Standaard (Dutch)

Barely 1% of immigrant kids born in Holland go to school in their homelands – this includes several thousands, mostly Turkish and Moroccans. The number is now half of what it used to be. According to the survey this is due to the current generation of immigrant parents being more Netherlands oriented. The kids who are sent back home do so mostly because their parents find the Dutch school system doesn’t agree with their and their kids needs.

A different study shows that the number of immigrant students in colleges and universities has grown by about half, from 68,000 students in 2000/2001 to 101,000 last year (out of 470,000 students overall). The non-Western immigrant student numbers came up from 34,000 to 58,000 (about 60%). The biggest group of student immigrants are the Surinamese.

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