{"id":422,"date":"2004-12-27T18:29:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-27T23:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=422"},"modified":"2005-12-08T17:46:30","modified_gmt":"2005-12-08T22:46:30","slug":"amsterstan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/amsterstan","title":{"rendered":"Amsterstan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Caldwell at the Weekly Standard wrote about the failures of multiculturalism and free immigration<\/a> in Holland. Looks like my brief glimpse of the country holds up:<\/p>\n

Many discussions of the Netherlands suggest that the country’s multicultural model is “under threat.” Maybe that was true a year ago. Now it would be more accurate to say there is a society-wide consensus that it has failed. Even before he left office in 2002, PvdA premier Wim Kok had begun tightening the country’s asylum laws, and under the conservative premiership of Jan Peter Balkenende, the reforms have picked up pace. One of the top priorities has been marriage laws. Several immigrant groups have an endogamy rate approaching 100 percent: Young, marriageable people return to their homelands to find a bride or groom and bring them back to Holland. Many Dutch believe the marriage laws are being abused simply to confer automatic citizenship and the right to welfare payments on as large a number of foreigners as possible. As a result, foreign spouses marrying Dutch citizens must now be 21 and speak Dutch, and their eligibility for welfare is not immediate. Education in foreign languages has been phased out, so the Dutch can concentrate on teaching their own endangered language.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest<\/a>. I gotta get back to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Caldwell at the Weekly Standard wrote about the failures of multiculturalism and free immigration in Holland. Looks like my brief glimpse of the country holds up: Many discussions of the Netherlands suggest that the country’s multicultural model is “under threat.” Maybe that was true a year ago. Now it would be more accurate to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Amsterstan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-6O","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1367,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/making-music","url_meta":{"origin":422,"position":0},"title":"Making Music","author":"Gil","date":"March 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael Bierut at DesignObserver feels that Dreamgirls misses the soul of the music that it's trying to capture, and he has some neat remarks about the \"production line\" of Holland, Dozier and Holland at Motown records. It puts me in mind of Jack Kirby's most prolific and productive era, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":891,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/post-up","url_meta":{"origin":422,"position":1},"title":"Post Up","author":"Gil","date":"March 28, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A couple of neat op\/eds at the Washington Post this morning: Robert Samuelson tries to break down the problems with French labor laws: The dilemma of advanced democracies, including the United States, is that they've made more promises than they can keep. Their political commitments outstrip the economy's capacity to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3212,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/poor-excuse-for-art","url_meta":{"origin":422,"position":2},"title":"Poor Excuse for Art","author":"Gil","date":"January 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not sure I agree with the writer's point \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that post-crash poverty freed Rembrandt do pursue his art for its own sake \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but it's been a long time since I posted a Rembrandt link up here, so enjoy.","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":472,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/mosque-by-ikea","url_meta":{"origin":422,"position":3},"title":"Mosque by Ikea?","author":"Gil","date":"February 23, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Last August, a group in Sweden flew me over to Stockholm and Malmo for a week, to tour me around the country's biotech industry, so that I could write about it in my magazine. I wrote all about it and posted some good pix: here, here, here, here, here, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1320,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/over-a-barrel","url_meta":{"origin":422,"position":4},"title":"Over a barrel","author":"Gil","date":"January 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Why have oil prices dropped from their near-$80\/barrel peak? Because the laws of supply and demand trump the sneaky practices of speculators who kept the price inflated. Oh, and OPEC \"has lately demonstrated its classic inclination toward ineffectiveness.\"","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2930,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lost-in-the-supermarket-doubleplusunkosher-edition","url_meta":{"origin":422,"position":5},"title":"Lost in the Supermarket: Doubleplusunkosher edition","author":"Gil","date":"November 18, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Sure, I could start taking pix from the local groceries when I visit my in-laws down in bayou country, but it's good to know that my supermarket has this awesome combo . . . . . . directly across from the \"ethnic\/kosher\" shelf. See the whole Lost in the Supermarket\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Lost in the Supermarket"","block_context":{"text":"Lost in the Supermarket","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/lost-in-the-supermarket"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3208\/3040255319_ea8db086f8.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}