According to D66 party chairman Jan Paternotte, the Netherlands should not focus less, but more on labor migration. He said that in his FD last weekend. According to Paternotte, this is necessary to keep the Dutch knowledge economy going, and if the Netherlands doesn’t do it, the Netherlands could follow the same path as the UK with Brexit.

However, the question remains whether D66 can find supporters for the position within the coalition; they insist on reducing the influx of migrants. However, Paternotte justified his statement: “What I primarily want to do is issue a warning,” he said. ‘I get the impression that the migration debate can get off track. And that you now actually see that one by one making statements, that I understand myself. But we have two very large neighboring countries that are taking different approaches, and we can learn a lot from that.’

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Paternotte refers specifically to the strategy used by Great Britain. There’s been a lot more emphasis on control and containment, and that’s having a sizeable negative effect on the population there, according to Paternotte. “At the same time, they knew that this was going to lead to a huge deficit, and now you can see that everywhere in the economy,” he continued. ‘Next year the average Slovene will do better than the average Englishman. Poverty there has risen sharply and waiting lists are very long in the care sector. I then thought: in terms of labor migration, let’s be honest with each other. We shouldn’t think we can do without labor migration, because there are 40,000 labor migrants working in health alone.’

Realism

He emphasized that the same thing applies to the construction sector, for example. ‘So you can talk about how you want to handle migration in the future, but then you have to do it based on the facts and what work you don’t want to do anymore in the Netherlands, for example. Of course you can.’

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How different is the German approach? That’s where – gründlich being a German – the focus is on labor migration. They plan for that too. They also ask themselves how they can get labor migrants to Germany, or how asylum seekers can find jobs more quickly. In the Netherlands we also know that there are quite a number of asylum seekers, so if we can get them to work, there will be less labor migration.’

Convince Ruth

Therefore, Paternotte’s goal was to convince Rutte of his point of view. “I will do my best, because I think it is only necessary in Holland,” he continued. ‘That we in the Netherlands pay attention to migration and that we don’t get caught up in statements about, for example, not bringing foreign students to the Netherlands anymore.’

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It is precisely the students who have global interests, said Paternotte. ‘I was in Eindhoven on Friday, where the fastest growing companies in the country are located; ASML. But also other smart companies like Philips and other Brainport companies. And that is exactly what these students need, as they often live in Eindhoven. And we don’t all train the many technicians they need in the Netherlands because the company is growing very fast. So they are very important.’