Housing minister calls for immigration restrictions, current rates ‘could disrupt society’

Hugo de Jonghe talking to a reporter. Photo: Depositphotos.com

The current Dutch population growth is unsustainable, increasing pressure on housing, can disrupt societyhousing minister Hugo de Jonge told Dutch Dougblad.

A Christian Democrat minister told the Protestant paper ND that everyone can understand that “we cannot continue to grow on the size of Zoetermeer”.

Population growth of about 100,000 people a year “should drop significantly,” De Jonghe told the newspaper. “Immigrants will always exist and they will be needed, but it turns out that we ask too much of society,” the minister said.

According to figures from the National Statistics Office CBS, the population of the Netherlands has grown by one million over the past decade and now stands at 17.7 million.

sum of 208,000 foreigners have moved Last year I went to Holland after a year of sharp declines in immigration due to coronavirus restrictions. The largest group, about 117,500, come from other her EU Member States or EFTA, while Dutch nationals returning from abroad account for about 44,500 “new” arrivals.

There are limits to what the Netherlands can do because of international treaties, but some of Holland’s neighbors are doing a “better job,” he said. “We can’t just shrug our shoulders about growth that can disrupt everything we think is important.”

policy

The current coalition, made up of the right-wing VVD and CDA, the Liberal Democrats D66 and the small Christian party ChristenUnie, has set immigration targets and pledged to “fundamentally revise” asylum policy. .

De Jonge declined to provide a target figure. “That’s what we have to do together,” he said. “We want to keep our support for immigration. That’s why we need to figure it out.”

“We need to carefully consider in which sectors workers are in short supply and where we have to be more selective,” he said.