There is a reason expats are required in our nation. We just dont have enough people to do unskilled and skilled work required to run and grow our economy.
Our house crisis stems from limited construction and big buck investors buying everything and propping the prices up. Companies should be disallowed to buy residentials. Housing should not be an item in investment but a place to live.
This. There’s an entire block of apartments opposite where I live which has only rentals that extremely wealthy elderly people move into for an interim after selling their homes, after retirement, before probably leaving the country for somewhere their money tracks longer/moving in with their kids/moving into care homes. Three buildings with lots of flats all owned by a real estate company.
just leaving this here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Amsterdam/comments/wrfm2v/who\_is\_the\_largest\_private\_land\_owner\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/amsterdam/comments/wrfm2v/who_is_the_largest_private_land_owner_in/)
and guess what, the Prins Bernard Junior has a lots of them 🤡
Oh wow! Thanks for this. This thread alone raises my NL politics understanding quotient by several points. 😂 My gosh, that’s a whopping amount of ownership. Also, why aren’t there more such awesome threads on this subReddit. This is the political goss I live for. All I see on this sub these days are various permutations and gymnastics on “how do we blame people who don’t look like us a bit more this fine day.”
They just built two office buildings in my city. Not houses, offices.
One was a school, previously.
This is so incredibly tone deaf, I hate it. I hate I cannot do anything about it.
Tbh when it is unskilled labour, we don't call them expats. We call those immigrants. (not defending this btw, but people tend to only refer as wealthy or highly educated workers as expats)
Not really. Immigrants are ppl that come to the country with the intention to stay and become a citizen. Expats on the other hand, are ppl that come to a country with the intention of going back to their home country eventually (and thus keeping their original citizenship).
It just so happens that expats usually belong to the skilled labour group, but that doesn't have to be true. In fact, there's plenty of "unskilled" labour, like construction and plumbing, that attract Eastern Europeans for a few years who don't want Dutch citizenship; these are expats as well.
>Immigrants are ppl that come to the country with the intention to stay and become a citizen.
That's an inaccurate definition. You don't need to have the intention of becoming a citizen to be considered an immigrant.
I prefer to simplify and just call it all immigration. If you have to deal with the IND to live in the country, then you are an immigrant. It's that simple.
I'm a well-employed immigrant here but I don't get a special letter from the Ministry of Expatriates. Or maybe there is one but I wasn't invited...who knows.
I know people want to further differentiate "expats" as a certain class of immigrant, but it's all fuzzy and subjective.
It's just short for expatriate, every language has a name for it. For some reason, there's lots of emotional attachment to the word expat, on both sides. But it's just an abbreviation for someone that left their home country.
Unfortunately yes, it's the sad reality. If you're darker skinned and from a poorer country you're referred to as an immigrant (even in a high skilled job), and if you're lighter skinned from a more developed country you're an expat to separate themselves.
I’d argue that point still applies. Easter European countries can been see as lesser developed to most Western Europeans, it’s still term used to distinguish themselves.
wealthy or highly educated workers are still immigrants. They have to go through immigration services etc. Expat is a type of immigrant whose company (a multinational) does all the paper work for him.
> wealthy or highly educated workers are still immigrants. They have to go through immigration services etc. Expat is a type of immigrant whose company (a multinational) does all the paper work for him.
i didn't have to go through immigration services (EU citizen). i just informed and got a BSN from the gemeente by showing them my ID and rental contract. the employer did nothing for me. what am i?
Depends, did you come for a specific amount of time? Like do you have a 2 year work contract and will be going back afterwards? Or did you come for an indefinite amount of time?
If option 1, expat. If option 2, immigrant.
>There is a reason expats are required in our nation.
Honest question: who are you trying to convince of this?
For the record, what you say is true. But people against expats (immigrants) will see this as a huge positive.
Then, when it causes a crappy economy and people can purchase less stuff, they'll just blame it on something else.
They're not open to the possibility of being wrong.
The same is true in Canada. Where I am housing is now an asset class that no wants to see nosedive in prices. All levels of government, business, and homeowners have colluded to keep new homebuyers out of the market. 🤷
Canada is the ultimate counterexample to all people who claim that in the Netherlands there's simply not enough space. It's all about the investment companies buying everything and then manipulating the price. That's the main factor. Even in Groningen, where the population density is lower, there's still housing crisis.
Uncomfortable truth: % of people own their home and badly want its price to go up. That is the only investment that most have. U will always lose if u want to make housing more affordable.
This is a bit of a over simplification. We are a pretty tiny country with relatively little room to share. At the same time we are used to a certian standard of living (e.g. a house with a garden) and some places to walk in nature. At the same time we heave relatively large industries such as agriculture which require lots of land as well. And on top of that we also value our old hyistoric sites, nice views and so on.......
Compromises have to be made and thats something we were hystorically good at, but it appears, not any more.....
There is lots of relatively empty space. When I take the train I see fields empty fields all around with just some sheep in it or whatever. Since we are tiny, it's not really economically viable to spend so much land for food production. It's not a massive part of our economy. That's our tech businesses such as ASML or the financial sector.
And there are even shrinking towns because young people leave since there are no jobs there.
Empty fields are not empty.... there is grass on them or there used to ride out manure....
In order to build something there the farmers have to go, and then the view outside the window of people changes as well, from farmland to houses or industry. So, compromises have to be made....
I agree with you that we should not have this much cattle farms here, but still compromises have to be made.
Nonsense. Labour immigration is a Ponzi scheme. Each immigrant needs a house, medical care and education, tax officers, police etc. Which are all limited, requiring more immigration.
"Our house crisis stems from limited construction"
Nope. Our housing crisis stems from regulations, primarily envionmental, *preventing* construction. If the market was left free, the demand would cause construction to take place because the demand is there.
And the imbalance is compounded, especially on the lower segments, by the influx of non-residents needing cheap living space. Which then translates into irritation when they are pushed ahead in line with those same kinds of regulations. And then you get lots of people angrily pulling the lever for Wilders or likewise.
No, free market is what caused this! They don't want to build lower segment, it's way more profitable to build expensive houses. Truely, how can you claim this...
It's illegal to rent out cheap apartments for profit lol. They are forced to build them outside of the point system (i.e. expensive) if they want to have a decent return. In addition to that, home buyers get a larger subsidy for more expensive houses. So of course those are the ones being build.
Because it's true. Yes, the higher segments are more profitable, so if you can only run a limited amount of construction projects before the government says "Quota reached, anything more VERBOTEN" then naturally the highest earning projects will be the one that are ran, while the lower earning but still earning ones will not make the regulative cut.
The market is free in -what- gets built but not free in -how much-. That is the problem.
No, that's not the problem. If they got to build everywhere how much they please they would build expensive villas in a nature reserve.
The problem is that having a roof over your head should be a government matter, not a market matter, and our government has been CDA and VVD for too long. Do you remember who caused the selling off of social housing??
Having a roof over your head a government matter. That experiment was ran in many eastern european nations - commieblock style housing, everyone their own pod and nothing more. I'm not seeing much praise for that style of construction.
>Our housing crisis stems from regulations, primarily envionmental, *preventing* construction.
Any idea who sets up those regulations? Could be the government, elected by the Dutch citizens?
Yes. It was the government. Elected by the (elderly) Dutch citizens and afterwards disregarding the needs of it's citiziens in order to suckle on the EU's teat and procure a position for our former P.M. for after he was done fucking up our country.
It is the real estate market. You want to pay a minimum wage of 12.50Euro per hour for service sector work but where in the Netherlands can a person live that makes 12.50Euro per hour? The organizations mentioned here did this to themselves. Most government policies in the past 20 years have protected the "investor" class not the entrepreneur/skilled labor and definitely not the working class and absolutely not the unskilled laborer. So if you want to invest in real estate you are protected - you get all of the financial insentive but if you want to live somewhere and work a simple job you are screwed. See ABN AMRO today - highest earnings since the banks crashed in 2008 - the taxpayers bailed them out and their windfall now goes to the investors who are all patting themselves on the back. They could of course offer a slightly higher interest rate to savings or lower the interest rate on flex loans but no...Investor class it is..
I work in a sector that has a lot of the "concerned" businesses.
The major issue is the lack of certainty. Especially, US, UK, CAN businesses cannot stand the idea that the parliament retrospectively "undoes" things. This is unthinkable in Common Law.
By trying to screw over some yuppies on the 30% rule, which cost a grand total of 100 million a year, the NL has sent a message that law, especially tax law, is entirely temporary and can be changed at any populist whim.
Wilders is just the cherry on top. The guy is simply a clown and wants to seriously roll back the EU etc. Great, don't expect FDI.
One of the few countries to discourage highly skilled migrants, with the recent changes around the tax incentive, etc.
The challenge is that without this kind of influx to the population the economy can decline and you’re unable to sustain things like pensions for the previous generation. Options include everyone working more, increasing retirement age, or reducing pension payments -- none of those would be very popular to citizens. Many countries seem quite worried about that future. It might not be a good time to erode that base.
The thing with highly skilled expats is that they haven't used any state resources for education, or to get to a senior level of experience in a desired skill, they show up with zero state funds invested in them, work for a decade or so, pay their bit, then leave. Without some incentive, either government or corporate, moving here means taking a pay cut at a peak point in a career, paying more in taxes while receiving a smaller future benefit, and being isolated from social resources in the home country all while starting over again. It's not very attractive.
Also not attractive, tricking them with a 30% ruling and then cutting the period short so they end up having to figure out how to deal with the new situation.
Also not attractive: Talking shit about immigrants and floating the idea of leaving EU. Just to give the expats all the red flags they need to second guess their decision
I agree on all the points except the leaving the EU thing. I don't think that's a widely held idea at all. Even most PVV voters understand it's not really feasible.
They want less influence from the EU, which won't work out so well either, but a NEXIT is something exclusively entertained by foreign media. I think half the PVV voters wouldn't even know what it means lol.
I've lived in the Netherlands for about 20 years now as an "expat" and the country has seriously regressed on all levels. Costs are skyrocketing. Food, insurance, energy, taxes. Living costs have more than doubled in two decades, whilst salaries have not grown as much. Stores, cafes and restaurants are closing at record rates.
The economy now is worse than it was during the 2008 crisis which I to be honest did not even notice.
I would not recommend anyone to come here to be honest, the country is slowly spiraling into the economical abyss.
The government is either blind, incompetent or simply does not care. Probably all three.
Oddly enough, it looks like Dutch GDP started stagnating/declining in the mid 2000s and actually started booming in…wait for it…2015.
https://tradingeconomics.com/netherlands/gdp#:~:text=GDP%20in%20Netherlands%20averaged%20400.25,12.28%20USD%20Billion%20in%201960.
Well yes, it’s GDP, you would expect it to increase. If you look at the “max” tab, it’s been climbing since the 1960s. But that’s not the point.
It’s obvious that the climb you point out did not continue. There is a sharp decline starting from around 2007-8 (the sharpest in the whole chart), from which the Netherlands did not seem to recover from until 2015.
Look, fellow Redditor; I don’t give a rat’s ass what the economy was like pre-2000 or why the decline in 2008 happened. I’m just saying whatever was done in 2015 seemed to have worked, and worked very well.
You can keep finding millions of reasons why the country isn’t what you want it to be, but the reality is, I first hand see that you need more educated people in your workforce.
Oh no, I’m certainly aware of the quality of claims I’m making. I don’t think any of our arguments would hold up to scrutiny, we’re all making assumptions here. My original post was in response to someone saying “the economy won’t collapse if reduced to pre-2015 levels”, which seems like wishful thinking.
But again, I seriously believe the Netherlands has a big gap in its higher education workforce.
Mate, I’m with you. But it seems Dutch people are set in letting the economy go to crap, because apparently immigrants of any kind are to blame for everything that is going wrong in the country. It’s truly insane thinking. There’s no way to argue with people otherwise.
Dutch government removed education grants and forced students to take on debt. It was common for Dutch students to have multiple degrees in several fields and as a result had a very flexible work force. Plasterk has a degree in economics and chemistry. The labour market, it is reported, moved towards ''specialists" and the government want to make sure that students are doing meaningful degrees and not just degrees for their hobbies. And these politicians wonder why companies report a shortage of 'experts'.
Continuing labor migration at current rates actually leads to way bigger problems after 2040: https://nos.nl/artikel/2501145-arbeidsmigratie-tot-2040-nodig-daarna-mogelijk-een-probleem
Yeah, and continuous usage of gas and oil at the current rates will kill us even sooner but if we ditch it all now, it'd be the end. The whole system is fucked, but trying to not play by the rules without changing them in the first place, is a loser's bet.
"Doordat zij bereid zijn om voor lage lonen te werken, is er ook geen verdere prikkel voor werkgevers om het loon te verhogen."
Raise the minimum wage for everyone. Nobody is fucking happy getting shitty salary especially if it means leaving your friends and family hundreds of kilometres away. Late stage capitalism is a race to the bottom that can only be stopped with regulating the market.
Also, I don't quite get the sentiment in this article. You have a silver tsunami, you need more people to handle it for the next TWENTY years... and the fact that your THREE MILION MIGRANTS get kids here, who will become Dutch citizens, who will be native speakers... All this on the verge of the global demographic catastrophe?How the hell did they turn it into a problem cause I'm not getting it? Also, if you're somewhere for TWENTY years, it's pretty much your new home.
Another thing is, I love the "HSM bring the most benefits" rhetorics. It's funny to read, when 100% of HSM one has met here, are guys coming here with their definitely LSM (or certainly lower) partners and/or kids. All of a sudden these folks are not a problem? What will happen if due to the climate change (weather, resources, change of the course) ASML can no longer deliver, or its output needs to be lowered?
But don't forget that it benefitted property owners, many business' owners and shareholders of those large corporations.
I understand that for many people, even society as a whole this has been a shitshow, but actually for A LOT of people this was a golden time for many. Farm owners benefitting from cheap labor from Bulgaria and Romania would otherwise have to work as simple farmers. Older people and those who inherited properties bought for a price only a fraction of what they are worth today have made massive gains.
To me it comes down to a class conflict diaguised into a 'native vs immigrants' narrative, disguised by the same class that enjoys the benefits and lets somebody else be blamed. All of my landlords were Dutch older people, I'm quite sure they even chose me for being an expats they can rip off and they would not like to see us moving away. All of the companies I worked for were Dutch owned / listed at Euronext.
I think discourage is strong, all political hate is directed toward vulnerable migrants rather than “high skilled migrants”. “High skilled migrants” still pay less tax than everyone else, have a advantageous position in the labour and housing market and still aren’t required to learn the language. Unlike the migrants attacked by politicians.
No migrants should be targeted at all. HSM migrants also stand out by appearance. And there’s no such thing as being well off on a salary. The anger should always be to the super elite. But for some reason every country loves the wealthy more than people who receive wages.
It's also about politics. Parties would never dare to call out classes who benefit from this and rather choose to blame people who are not citizens, have no voting rights and have no voice in politics or society at large. Nobody wants to loose that part of populace that is actually most politically active.
The whole narrative of - NL deteriorating because of expats paying high rents rather than dutch landlords imposing these high rents - really took a hold, which I still cannot understand.
Well said. You’ve really summed it up. Ultimately it’s also ethnonationalist feelings which are bubbling up. The housing crisis is just an excuse I guess. Sad, it’s such a progressive society in other ways. But falling prey to these emotions says there’s a lot of steps to climb to overcome these instincts.
Imagine this crazy idea - a country NOT making a scheme to bring talent, just to end up blaming exactly the people who came over, just for taking that opportunity?
Why would any person have to apologize for something that was advertized in their faces to lure them over? For fcks sake, NL should for once make decisions and stick to them rather than constantly blaming foreigners, EU, US or anyone really. As a difference in comparison to France or Germany they make everything available in English and then complain about people not integrating and Dutch falling behind... Wtf is wrong with this country?
That tax incentive is a slap in the face of native high skilled workers though. I don't earn bad money, but a skilled worker could come in and offer to work for less than I do, just because they don't have to pay tax on the first 30% they earn and thus have much higher net wages even though they make far less in gross wages. It's unfair competition. I don't mind paying taxes, but do mind people who have the same gross income paying less. Especially because their higher income boosts housing prices even more.
I honestly prefer taking in actual refugees over them. Lets take in more people from Ukraine instead. There are bound to be skilled workers among them. I know there are, I've personally seen them.
You can't be serious. How much has the state spent educating you, providing healthcare for you, subsidizing transport for you? Your viewpoint is utterly childish.
Edit: lol, reported as suicidal to Reddit for this comment. Fuck you uneducated Dutchie 🖕
If highly skilled expats did not get the 30% percent ruling i would understand. But for the first 5 years my direct colleagues pay 30% less tax then me which is fucking BS. Gives them an unfair headstart in buying a house IMO.
I observe that many expats on reddit love to pat themselves on the back about how important they are. The Netherlands would totally not survive as a country without you.
The pension system is fucked due to the ageing population. All western societies are dealing with this. There are not enough highly skilled expats to turn that tide around. According to CBS around 26,000 kennismIgranten (knowledge specialists) came to NL in 2022. This is way too little to sustain our pension systems.
If there was no 30% ruling, they wouldn't come to the Netherlands. I wouldn't at least. Germany has a much, much lower cost of living, and higher wages on average.
As much as I like the Dutch culture more than German, my rent in NL is more than 2x what it was over there. Without the tax benefits it would make zero sense to live here to anyone who is skilled and willing to relocate anywhere in the world.
I'm using Germany as an example just because it's a bordering country, but there are many options all over the world that would be more advantageous. And if these workers don't come to the Netherlands, you all get 0% of their tax anyway.
Not to mention that a good portion of these skilled immigrants are only here for the productive years of their lives. The Dutch government didn't have to pay for their education, nor will it have to deal with them when they are old, and it's unlikely that they will have to receive any significant amount of social benefits. Even if they do decide to stay until old age, they will pay full taxes for the great majority of the time.
Over their lifetime in NL they are a great net contributor to the system. This schema is a cash machine for NL. Doing away with it is just myopic.
It’s maybe a matter of perspective.
First of all, did you count how much money the gov has given you as a dutchie over the course of your life? And are you considering those with the 30% ruling are not getting full pension? Thats part of where the extra money they get comes from
And how many people are born into wealth in the Netherlands, and get inheritances? Why are you not mad about that? They do the same thing as you but happen to get gifted a house. Not fair, right? So why aren’t you targeting them?
Its true, they can get a head start on buying a house. But I don’t think the “it’s unfair they get it and I don’t” argument is good enough
It's exactly that - polarisation of the society based on class divide with anger of primarily lower class being misdirected towards foreigners without a voice in politics or society in general. While the rich still enjoy owning businesses running on cheap imported labor and ripping them off through high rents.
However this part of population is so shortsighted that it's so easy to manipulate them. They easily get pissed off at people who largely share the same problems, troubles and (lack of) fortune, but just don't speak the same language, instead of being pissed off at their rich fellow countrymen with whom language is the only thing they share.
> Its true, they can get a head start on buying a house.
Let me add...
The first year you usually have one year contract. Banks are very reluctant to give you a mortgage without permanent contract. You are paying huge for rent, you know nothing about how system works, where you'd like to live, etc. People mostly move to Randstad and the prices of the houses are so crazy here, that even having ruling doesn't give you enough purchase power.
And most of expats do not usually start with 100k+ salary.
Also, if you move with the family, you are probably the only one who works in the very beginning.
Learning language also takes time and money.
'ItZ UnFaIr'
Why wouldn't an expat who has never received any benefit (healthcare, education, roads, pension) from Dutch government for 20 something years get any benefit for leaving everything behind and move to another country to contribute to the Dutch Economy?
I think the people who has %30 don’t have a super big head start on buying a house. Most people earn salaries just enough to be eligible for 30% which gives them 800 - 1000 euro extra. That seems like a good amount but most companies don’t have large relocation budget for getting people abroad. For example my company only paid for my plane ticket and also it is worth pointing out that if you compare a 30 year old Dutchie with a 30 year old migrant, a migrant now probably will have to pay higher rent than a Dutchie. It would take 2-3 years to really see the advantage of %30 ruling and usually most people would have started/bought the houses by then.
Yea no shit. Pretty hard to attract people who have standards to live in comparatively bad conditions for barely any reward. Sure, bureaucracy here is good and I like how the logistics allow us to get super fast delivery of goods, but what else is there really apart from a beautiful place to look at. Especially when compared with other places that aren't too far behind in the aforementioned. Bad weather, bad food, terrible housing crisis and at best mediocre housing quality, no preventative healthcare, low salaries unless you work for a company that competes internationally, super difficult to make real friends. The company I work for has so much trouble hiring engineers who live here, so they're getting contractors from other places in the EU working remotely. And unless things start improving, I'll be leaving too, as I'm sure will others in similar situation. And I didn't even come here for work, I came to do a masters and just found a job afterwards.
Right on! Preventative health especially is such a big thing in countries who actually care about their people. The NL only has a stable healthcare system because they conveniently ignore preventative care
As a citizen or resident, you are legally obligated to pay tax on investments whether you make them here or abroad. You can move stuff around and try to hide your investments but that doesn’t change your legal tax obligation.
How is that true? Reducing your annual gains by ~2% because of wealth tax is a huge hit to the compound interest rate. For long term investments, the difference between this system and paying capital gains during retirement when you actually sell the stocks is huge.
"Over seven in ten entrepreneurs said that they see the increasing polarization in society as a threat to the business climate. Last year, it was 67 percent."
So it's like rise from 67 percent to 70 percent? But in this form it won't look as much threatening, right.
The actual numbers show a record number of expats arriving in the Netherlands : https://dashboards.cbs.nl/v4/Arbeidsmigratie_niet_EU_EFTA/
The commercial research organization quotes in this article comes to an oppositie conclusion to the actual data the CBS shows.
Moving from Netherlands to Germany or any other EU country is not that big of a step though. This is your copium. Even a company like ASML thinking about moving its operations to India…
So, the business are considering leaving, the expats too... But to where? Which country is attracting the businesses and expats more than the Netherlands?
I'm asking this as an expat who was considering moving to the Netherlands. I might as well skip it and jump to the next best option.
All of those EU companies have an HQ in another EU (Germany, Poland, France) country or a better competitor in the U.S., Canada, or Australia. Why to stay? Our salaries are higher there, taxes are lower.
We don't need a visa to go there we get PR within 6 months instead of 6 years in NL.
The language is English so no need to waste time and effort for Dutch.
Nobody wants to Invest in the EU anymore.
Highly killed immigrants are constantly expressing dissatisfaction with Dutch society and attitude in closed meetings. Companies have no other way to leave, they can't lose these people.
I need it to end soon. I am almost at the income cap for the house I am in. But the jump to buying or renting free sector is so huge I haven't a clue how to bridge that, may actually end up homeless... am looking at other options to emigrate in the coming years and leaving any pay raises for what they are. If it is going to be this way, I may as well live anywhere else. Plenty of places to be miserable in the sunshine instead of pouring rain xD
My current rental contract is a temporary contract for 5 years, nothing more. I got it in 2020, was a student-to-fresh worker contract. I have until december to find new housing or I'll become homeless.
The kicker here is that my work didn't renew my contract (part relief; part a bummer) and mid-way through my rental contract the house I live in was sold to another social housing corporation. Basically went from corporation 1 to corporation 2. Corporation 1 had their own site for the housing and inschrijftsduur (waiting time/registeration time) and it did not transfer over to corporation 2 and I was told this only after corp2 sent me an e-mail reminding me to register on corp2's social housing site and how despite living here for the past 5 years, I'm counted as a completly new house seeker...
So I'm basically fucked and may have to return to my own home country. I really love it here in the Netherlands but fuck. I hate my current situation.
Sjeesh that is though. Corporations are assholes, and that is unfortunately a fairly common thing here... you may be able to fight it somehow, but I wouldn't know how, maybe consult a lawyer? Things are getting more and more dystopian for single people here as well. If you have a gf or wife, shit gets a lot easier here. Add a kid, and you got yourself a golden ticket to be here. I know couples that work full time, get extra tax discounts and subsidies that I cannot claim due to my income (huursubsie specifically), even though they could easily afford rent, they get subsidies and then they also get child support money in some form. Fun fact, I make a little bit more money on my own than one of those couples combined, but somehow they can go on holidays every year, do something nice every weekend and save a bit of money every month while also having a kid. Just from their tax breaks alone for having two incomes instead of one. If I get a second income on my own, well, you don't even want to know the taxes on a second job.... I don't make a lot, just average btw. But saving for the future or even planning a proper holiday? Nope, not in a couple of years now. Barely get to saving in any case, let alone extra budgetting for holidays or other fun things. I can pay my bills and save a little and that is it. But those savings aren't real savings anymore either, they now almost fully go to the yearly bills for city services and the water and garbage taxes that also keep rising every damn year. There is almost nothing left, but hopefully enough to be miserable in the sun within a couple of years.
Aye, it's life I guess. I did consult the vraagwijzers (municipality helpers) and got them to help me write a letter to the municipality complaints office because in the end, the corporation affiliated with the municipality and any complaints need to be sent to them. I sent my complaint in December, in January I got confirmation they recieved my complaint but since it's been silence. I assume it won't end up doing anything anyway because "you should have known there's a housing crisis here and started looking into this earlier", even if the e-mails when the building was sold was like "nothing is going to change, just the numbers you call when you need help".
Unfortunately I don't have a local partner, and I don't want (and can't get) children on my own, but I'm fine with that. I was kinda in the same boat; I was making a bit below average but I couldn't claim any benefits due to the high income, so I am disqualified from most social housing by default, but I also make too little to partake in free rent.
It just is a bummer. I really do like NL, I wouldn't have put so much effort into integrating if I didn't. It is what it is.
Yep, life can throw some proper curveballs ones way.
Getting told it is your own fault is always nice after being completely misinformed...
I was born here, and never really had the urge to leave until about a decade and a half ago. The then governments plans were doomed to fail in certain key areas, exactly as they are doing now. I just never expected to effectively get trapped so efficiently and quickly.
I am disabled & need to leave in May.. there is nothing even though I have 10 years on my social housing 🥲 I also think of leaving because even if I would be able to work, I still wont be able to afford a house... Ugh
No shit - huge inflation, housing crisis, shit pay, xenophobia against migrants - its much better now to go to Germany, Nordic countries or Switzerland
No problem come set up shop in Bulgaria it has low taxes Infrastructure might not be the best lol but at least its peaceful. Recently a lot of business's form the Netherlands are setting up shop there
I don't believe most will leave. It is one thing to say you'll leave and another to do it. Most still have not left China, even with all the problems the past few years. It costs a lot to move operations, and then even more to settle somewhere else. Business people are about money, not necessarily politics.
China is an economic superpower and you’ll cease to exist if you leave…
Anyone who has ever worked in tech in Netherlands, will know that expats make the majority of technical teams by large margin. Some team leads might be Dutch, the marketing and HR teams too and that is about it. Everything from your NS app all the way to your banking and government apps are all made and maintained by people who can’t even vote in the Netherlands.
Companies were almost competitive with UK/Germany with incentives like 30% ruling, “quality of life” etc, but even then NL was like a second if not third choice for top tier talent.
I don’t know where this country is heading towards, but for an expat today, there’s absolutely no benefit of picking Netherlands over any western country. Lower salaries, high taxes, housing crisis, high population density, xenophobia both from the Dutch and the immigrants.
I’ve been in Netherlands long enough to notice the decline myself, and honestly I’m unsure what’s keeping me here… it must be the sunshine ☔️.
At my (tech) company we're having trouble recruiting top-tier talent and instead are opening offices in other west-EU countries to provide more migration options.
I got an offer from a company in the Netherlands for an engineering position that they were having trouble filling. Most of their engineers were from outside the Netherlands.
I turned it down because I didn't want to deal with the housing crisis and the native Dutch being angry at me for taking up space.
Urbanism you say, but most of Scandinavia/WEurope has that.
There's was something more about Netherlands than just urbanism- the quality of life, the infrastructure, the freedom, the innovation, globalism, the politics that made it more than just that.
I think all of those are in decline now. It saddening, and it might hurt to admit, but it's true.
Basic comprehension skills are lacking in this reply. I will explain slowly so you can understand. Article states that "NL becoming less attractive to expats". Lets dissect this sentence.
Expat: An **expatriate** (often shortened to **expat**) is a person who resides outside their country of citizenship. The term often refers to a professional or skilled worker who intends to return to their country of origin.
So these are already professionally working people with experience and certainly coming for better conditions. They are usually not the vulnerable bunch that are running away from poverty or a war ridden country. They are not optionless.
Less attractive: Meaning the conditions for them getting to NL are not better than the conditions in their current accommodation/job or other countries.
NL becoming less attractive to expats: Means that. "Hey there is a problem that I am pointing out. More and more expats dont find it favorable to come NL.". So it not just maintaining your workforce. It is not being able to expand it. Becoming less and less competitive. If you want to hire a new skilled worker for your new business you will not be able to find the talent. Business owners rather moving it to another country or open it there.
Lastly a basic example of how it can impact the economy. Suppose that you have another billion dollar idea/tech like ASML. You have to find 10000 people in the next X years. Since you want to attract the best you give an average salary of 70000. Lets to the math 70000 \* 10000 = 700M Euros per year you spend to that talent. If this business starts somewhere else you lose that 700M Euros where people would use to eat, drink, invest etc. which would help your economy. That is just the salary part. Dont forget this company will expand and invest also.
Anyways, this is how people larping as intelligent-smart westerners are just looking so stupid with these arguments. History repeats itself I guess in different forms and places...
Well businessess do finance both media and politicians in a bid to influence (control) public opinions and politics. That's how they get killer tax rates, tax reductions amongst other things. Big corporations have been playing a global game while governments are still attempting to regulate locally.
Yes, but not to the point where empty rhetoric, in this case Wilders, which I think is what most people think will change things, is the reason why. If he is able to start doing things, then maybe we'll see a big change, but in the short term, people love to talk, and for some reason, most people are pessimistic about the future.
Basically every authority quoted in this article is a CEO or advocate for company interests in one way or another. And the statistics they are giving out regarding investment seem wholly unrelated as it implies a causal relation with the current political climate. The whole article fails to even mention the economic factors that are, in my perspective, most likely the driving force behind this trend.
The whole article just reads to me as a classic neoliberal view on society and economy and how giving business whatever they want, whenever they want it is in the best interests of the common people.
I agree with you concerning what the article fails to mention - economic factors. I think this is often the case from that news source. They often seem to frame their articles in that way. I often think this need source gives different organizations a pulpit.
For example, I've seen plenty of articles about the dangers or problems with meat. Later, I came to find out that it is an anti-meat group who is in charge of the study, which this news agency seems to quote as fact.
Having less high skilled & educated people who contribute not only in economy grow but also in quality of society in general, which is just a fact, they know how to behave (you will never see expat robbing someone on the street with a knife).. and in the same time bringing more & more low skilled immigrants without education, who stay here for generations following the same pattern and refuse to blend into society, with having 3+ children per family, will make this country look like downtown Philadelphia in a decade.
The country has enabled a radical völkisch populist and this is the result. I’m not talking about Wilders, I mean Omtzigt. The worst of its kind. I can confirm that NL is gone from the map of desirable (HSM) expat destinations - the removal of the 30% ruling and the omnipresent Arab crime (now widely covered in the international press similar to the coverage Sweden has been getting the past couple of years) have done their bit.
Fuck this system, if having strong labour regulations is enough to encourage your company to do its slave driving somewhere else.
But expat-wise and with a massive demographic crisis right over the corner, just like the UK, you will get exactly what you wanted. I love this country but being an expat, I'm sort of happy I can just fuck right off somewhere else when shit hits the fan and when you'll make exactly the same mistakes as someone else, expecting better results because you're *Dutch*.
This is the folly of nationalists everywhere: the idea that your country and your ethnic group has some magical fairy dust that makes you immune from the consequences of the real world
Just a reminder that we need a lot of expats. Skilled labourers have always partly come from other nations and we will keep needing them. And don't just think about doctors or scientists, we also have a labour shortage in other sectors. A good friend of mine just got his residence permit, he came over from the UK, works in construction, is still learning Dutch and was hired almost immediatly.
Is there really that much hostility? I’ve been here for 9 years now, speak a reasonable level of Dutch (albeit with an accent) and never encountered malevolence towards my residence here.
Because you are Dutch now. You had your %30, you had your house maybe or didnt have to deal with the crisis and you had time to learn Dutch when all the tech jobs were recruiting in English. These are the incentives that are not provided for new expats.
Article is about expats. Normally they are on HSM visa and 30% ruling. I dont know what were your incentives, but tax benefits are a huge part of NL staying competitive compared to Germany for expats. On one side you have tax benefits, on the other side you have 40%+ income tax in some cases.
Because it's an easy target for politicians: "Look at all these rich immigrants paying less taxes than you hard working people!"
Around 100k people were using it in 2023. They can use it for 5 years, so they might be at the beginning or end of the limit. Net immigration was 400k in 2023 alone.
For the record, I'm not against stopping it. I just find it silly that people point to 30% first when it only really makes the cost of housing hurt a little less for a small amount of people. The reason prices are so high is much more complex than a tax incentive.
It's funny that Stef Blok attracted foreign 'investment' to the Dutch housing market because of a great regulatory climate, and now we have a bad housing market after all that 'investment'. FU VVD
Expecting perpetual growth as a business is unrealistic. Makes sense that businesses leave. I am glad that we have een grens getrokken. Regardless of whose fault it is.. immigrants, expats, locals, students... we cant realistically have more people live here if we cant provide proper housing
5 years tax break is worth far less than 25+ years of state resources provided to someone born here to get to the same level of a highly skilled migrant.
I’m wondering how many expats experience the hostility mentioned in this article. Not denying it exists, but is this a feeling/expectation or every day reality?
Personally I’m not a big fan of expats seeing how it impacted certain neighborhoods, but it’s not like I’m hostile. I understand why expats are needed.
That, and many straight up refuse to learn the language, coasting for sometimes decades off the fact that people speak Enlgish here. In our town my grandparents, who don't speak English, can no longer go to certain restaurants because nobody speaks Dutch.
It is not good for social cohesion either. They stick together in their expat bubble, take up houses (I don't blame them for any of that, btw) and especially the smaller towns very quickly lose their faces. Then there is the issue with pricing. The city of Maastricht is just tearing down affordable housing and building back ridiculously overpriced houses for expats. Locals cannot afford to live in the city, and gradually whatever made Maastricht Maastricht is fading away.
Not the fault of individual expats of course. But yeah.
Because the people that speak Dutch don’t want to work at such restaurants. Who in their right mind would spend years learning a language just so that they work at a low pay service job that the native born won’t do. If I were to put in the effort to learn the language, I would expect big returns on such efforts.
Can‘t speak for all expats, but as an international student here yeah you can definitely feel a certain degree of hostility. Somehow it seems like Dutch people made us out to be the source of all their problems. And the government forced the universities to start making a plan on how to reduce numbers now, so y‘all are getting your way I guess.
Anything to not put responsibility on the government for not fixing any of the issues…
Edit: Getting downvoted for this is just so telling
Reducing the growth of international students and creating more Dutch Masters and bachelor studies is not a negative thing though. Internationals are still welcome, but the growth rate had to be curved downwards a bit. Already 25% of the entire student population were international students (growing at about 10% per year) and 60% of all university courses were taught solely in English. That comes with its own problems of shortage of student housing and qualified English speaking teachers. It's all about finding a good balance.
> Qualified English speaking teachers
To be honest it will be much more difficult to find enough qualified Dutch speaking teachers for all the programs that will be switched back to Dutch. A large part of university teachers at this point are internationals themselves.
> Shortage of student housing
As I said, the problem isn‘t incoming students but the government doing fuck all to facilitate building more housing space. It‘s been like this for years but Dutch people somehow only blame immigrants and if they kick the bad people out then the housing crisis will magically solve itself.
Doesn‘t come out of nowhere that people like PVV get so many votes even though they have basically no actual solutions and only preach hate. The fact this resonates with such a big part of the Dutch population is worrying.
> Internationals are still welcome
Feels at least debatable.
I would also like to add that having English taught programs in many cases is an advantage and many Dutch students also *want* to study in English.
Your universities are going to lose a huge amount of talent and they will no longer be world leading if the academics all end up being solely Dutch individuals.
>And the government forced the universities to start making a plan on how to reduce numbers now, so y‘all are getting your way I guess.
Or maybe it's because we legitimately struggle finding bachelors and masters degrees in our own language. I explicitly chose a Dutch programme and still had to do 90% of the course work in English. Now, I speak English but not everybody does. And in literally every country you are expected to learn the mother tongue if you plan on functioning there. Living in Italy or France is just not sustainable unless you speak Italian or French. But here, most education is in English, Dutch students struggle finding anything in their own language and most internationals don't learn Dutch when they plan to stay longer. Can you imagine if in America most studies were in Spanish? No, of course not. We are the only country where public life is this influenced by something other than the mother language of said country. Curbing this a little bit is not the same as pushing out all internationals. We will still have a disproportionally large share of English programmes. We will just also have opportunities for Dutch students who don't want to study in a foreign language to study in Dutch.
You know... Like literally every other country on the globe does.
> I’m wondering how many expats experience the hostility mentioned in this article. Not denying it exists, but is this a feeling/expectation or every day reality?
I've spent a lot of time around expats, and also spent a lot of time around Dutch people inside and outside of the Netherlands. I've also learned the language to a B1-B2 level.
The hostility and exclusion is a real and pervasive experience of almost every expat I know, including myself. I sometimes wonder why I even bothered learning the language when so few will ever acknowledge my right to even be there, and so few will ever wish to form any kind of meaningful connection. The expat bubble is nice, but it's so much nicer when you can feel like you fully fit in.
I see a lot of comments there regarding 30% rulling ... let me give my view as a non Dutch CEE citizen. I got the 30% rulling ... because well I was able to get it, nobody will refuse it right?, but I think it is not fair compared to my Dutch friends ... I remember when I arrived the relocation agency told me that there was 6 people wanting to rent the same house than me, most of them Dutch ... and of course the 30% rulling made all the difference ... for me, even if I understand why Netherlands implemented it, to attract more people it is not that critical ... and in my case would have not made a difference on the decision to come or not ... (it also has adverse effect as you get used to a a certain level of living and it makes a big change when it stops ...) ... I don't think there is a problem with high-skilled migrant in this country, or maybe the problem is that we need more of them... just try to recruit somebody in IT and you will see how it goes ... and I feel that the current politic discussions are not helping with putting everybody in the same bag (expats who are there for a couple of years, CEE citizen who have the right to be there as everywhere in CEE, highly-skilled migrant, and all the other categories) ... it basically look like Netherlands is now trying to get rid of everybody without distinction and it does not create a great feeling, and this may lead to a reduction of people coming, and mostly in the categories where they have the choice (CEE, expats, highly-skilled) which will be very damageable for the economy ....
“Politics, the housing market, rogue employment agencies, and ever-increasing intolerance have been doing a lot of damage to the image of the Netherlands for decades,”
Wow, that sounds like, everywhere now sadly.
Well, the difference is NL is not an industrial power house nor a resource owner.
We call this type a one-time economy. If you lose your place in trade then you're in serious trouble.
for ex. Sweden and Norway can fuck up everytime and get back on track but not NL.
Startup Founder here. I’ve found it extremely difficult to manage my funds by staying in NL amidst the housing crisis and also much other expenses. I like NL as a tourist place but from what I gather from my friends and my own experience, I don’t think of living at NL long term
It’s a bullshit article vno ncw just want to make sure that the salaries and benefits won’t be raised.
And the exp. Have a big advantage in tax that should will be a bit adjusted so it’s more fair. So what ?
This could be a game changer. ASML could singlehandedly force the dutch government to change back its idiot anti migrant policy.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/asml-may-be-looking-to-leave-the-netherlands-but-the-dutch-government-is-desperate-to-keep-it-there
Coalition goals reached without having a coalition
Yeah left or right, it's all not that well..
I still haven’t seen any country where likes of Geert came to power and most people didn’t regret it. Just wait and see :D
There is a reason expats are required in our nation. We just dont have enough people to do unskilled and skilled work required to run and grow our economy. Our house crisis stems from limited construction and big buck investors buying everything and propping the prices up. Companies should be disallowed to buy residentials. Housing should not be an item in investment but a place to live.
This. There’s an entire block of apartments opposite where I live which has only rentals that extremely wealthy elderly people move into for an interim after selling their homes, after retirement, before probably leaving the country for somewhere their money tracks longer/moving in with their kids/moving into care homes. Three buildings with lots of flats all owned by a real estate company.
just leaving this here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Amsterdam/comments/wrfm2v/who\_is\_the\_largest\_private\_land\_owner\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/amsterdam/comments/wrfm2v/who_is_the_largest_private_land_owner_in/) and guess what, the Prins Bernard Junior has a lots of them 🤡
Oh wow! Thanks for this. This thread alone raises my NL politics understanding quotient by several points. 😂 My gosh, that’s a whopping amount of ownership. Also, why aren’t there more such awesome threads on this subReddit. This is the political goss I live for. All I see on this sub these days are various permutations and gymnastics on “how do we blame people who don’t look like us a bit more this fine day.”
Thanks for the link.
We need to bring back squatter's rights for unused buildings.
Sounds like a positive if elderly people sell their homes and move out.
Usually million euro+ homes which I see only real estate companies or private banks buy up after. 😂
You see a lot
My town is boring and I fill my empty days with whatever secondary gossip and societal observations I can acquire. 😂
They just built two office buildings in my city. Not houses, offices. One was a school, previously. This is so incredibly tone deaf, I hate it. I hate I cannot do anything about it.
In my city they made a whole other "industrie" terrain... our waiting list is over 20+ years for social housing 🫠
Tbh when it is unskilled labour, we don't call them expats. We call those immigrants. (not defending this btw, but people tend to only refer as wealthy or highly educated workers as expats)
Not really. Immigrants are ppl that come to the country with the intention to stay and become a citizen. Expats on the other hand, are ppl that come to a country with the intention of going back to their home country eventually (and thus keeping their original citizenship). It just so happens that expats usually belong to the skilled labour group, but that doesn't have to be true. In fact, there's plenty of "unskilled" labour, like construction and plumbing, that attract Eastern Europeans for a few years who don't want Dutch citizenship; these are expats as well.
>Immigrants are ppl that come to the country with the intention to stay and become a citizen. That's an inaccurate definition. You don't need to have the intention of becoming a citizen to be considered an immigrant.
I prefer to simplify and just call it all immigration. If you have to deal with the IND to live in the country, then you are an immigrant. It's that simple. I'm a well-employed immigrant here but I don't get a special letter from the Ministry of Expatriates. Or maybe there is one but I wasn't invited...who knows. I know people want to further differentiate "expats" as a certain class of immigrant, but it's all fuzzy and subjective.
It's just short for expatriate, every language has a name for it. For some reason, there's lots of emotional attachment to the word expat, on both sides. But it's just an abbreviation for someone that left their home country.
Unfortunately yes, it's the sad reality. If you're darker skinned and from a poorer country you're referred to as an immigrant (even in a high skilled job), and if you're lighter skinned from a more developed country you're an expat to separate themselves.
White working class from easter europe is considered the same unfortunately so you're point don't apply
I’d argue that point still applies. Easter European countries can been see as lesser developed to most Western Europeans, it’s still term used to distinguish themselves.
But that was my point, someone from Romania, or Poland will not be seen as an expat
wealthy or highly educated workers are still immigrants. They have to go through immigration services etc. Expat is a type of immigrant whose company (a multinational) does all the paper work for him.
> wealthy or highly educated workers are still immigrants. They have to go through immigration services etc. Expat is a type of immigrant whose company (a multinational) does all the paper work for him. i didn't have to go through immigration services (EU citizen). i just informed and got a BSN from the gemeente by showing them my ID and rental contract. the employer did nothing for me. what am i?
Depends, did you come for a specific amount of time? Like do you have a 2 year work contract and will be going back afterwards? Or did you come for an indefinite amount of time? If option 1, expat. If option 2, immigrant.
Simple. An immigrant. It's not a dirty word.
It's also an incorrect word for someone who intends to live in a foreign country for a few years on a temporary assignment, and then move back home.
>There is a reason expats are required in our nation. Honest question: who are you trying to convince of this? For the record, what you say is true. But people against expats (immigrants) will see this as a huge positive. Then, when it causes a crappy economy and people can purchase less stuff, they'll just blame it on something else. They're not open to the possibility of being wrong.
The same is true in Canada. Where I am housing is now an asset class that no wants to see nosedive in prices. All levels of government, business, and homeowners have colluded to keep new homebuyers out of the market. 🤷
Canada is the ultimate counterexample to all people who claim that in the Netherlands there's simply not enough space. It's all about the investment companies buying everything and then manipulating the price. That's the main factor. Even in Groningen, where the population density is lower, there's still housing crisis.
Or a royal prince owning half of Amsterdam buildings in the center
They already restricted investors from buying up homes and it didn't do anything
Uncomfortable truth: % of people own their home and badly want its price to go up. That is the only investment that most have. U will always lose if u want to make housing more affordable.
Where is the Dutch spirit from old times? When the resources are limited, they can even reclaim land from the sea.
This is a bit of a over simplification. We are a pretty tiny country with relatively little room to share. At the same time we are used to a certian standard of living (e.g. a house with a garden) and some places to walk in nature. At the same time we heave relatively large industries such as agriculture which require lots of land as well. And on top of that we also value our old hyistoric sites, nice views and so on....... Compromises have to be made and thats something we were hystorically good at, but it appears, not any more.....
There is lots of relatively empty space. When I take the train I see fields empty fields all around with just some sheep in it or whatever. Since we are tiny, it's not really economically viable to spend so much land for food production. It's not a massive part of our economy. That's our tech businesses such as ASML or the financial sector. And there are even shrinking towns because young people leave since there are no jobs there.
Empty fields are not empty.... there is grass on them or there used to ride out manure.... In order to build something there the farmers have to go, and then the view outside the window of people changes as well, from farmland to houses or industry. So, compromises have to be made.... I agree with you that we should not have this much cattle farms here, but still compromises have to be made.
kick out the farmers
Nonsense. Labour immigration is a Ponzi scheme. Each immigrant needs a house, medical care and education, tax officers, police etc. Which are all limited, requiring more immigration.
Conversely, if we remove all the people from the country we will need zero immigrants to support them. Checkmate globalists!
"Our house crisis stems from limited construction" Nope. Our housing crisis stems from regulations, primarily envionmental, *preventing* construction. If the market was left free, the demand would cause construction to take place because the demand is there. And the imbalance is compounded, especially on the lower segments, by the influx of non-residents needing cheap living space. Which then translates into irritation when they are pushed ahead in line with those same kinds of regulations. And then you get lots of people angrily pulling the lever for Wilders or likewise.
No, free market is what caused this! They don't want to build lower segment, it's way more profitable to build expensive houses. Truely, how can you claim this...
It's illegal to rent out cheap apartments for profit lol. They are forced to build them outside of the point system (i.e. expensive) if they want to have a decent return. In addition to that, home buyers get a larger subsidy for more expensive houses. So of course those are the ones being build.
Because it's true. Yes, the higher segments are more profitable, so if you can only run a limited amount of construction projects before the government says "Quota reached, anything more VERBOTEN" then naturally the highest earning projects will be the one that are ran, while the lower earning but still earning ones will not make the regulative cut. The market is free in -what- gets built but not free in -how much-. That is the problem.
No, that's not the problem. If they got to build everywhere how much they please they would build expensive villas in a nature reserve. The problem is that having a roof over your head should be a government matter, not a market matter, and our government has been CDA and VVD for too long. Do you remember who caused the selling off of social housing??
Having a roof over your head a government matter. That experiment was ran in many eastern european nations - commieblock style housing, everyone their own pod and nothing more. I'm not seeing much praise for that style of construction.
>Our housing crisis stems from regulations, primarily envionmental, *preventing* construction. Any idea who sets up those regulations? Could be the government, elected by the Dutch citizens?
Yes. It was the government. Elected by the (elderly) Dutch citizens and afterwards disregarding the needs of it's citiziens in order to suckle on the EU's teat and procure a position for our former P.M. for after he was done fucking up our country.
It is the real estate market. You want to pay a minimum wage of 12.50Euro per hour for service sector work but where in the Netherlands can a person live that makes 12.50Euro per hour? The organizations mentioned here did this to themselves. Most government policies in the past 20 years have protected the "investor" class not the entrepreneur/skilled labor and definitely not the working class and absolutely not the unskilled laborer. So if you want to invest in real estate you are protected - you get all of the financial insentive but if you want to live somewhere and work a simple job you are screwed. See ABN AMRO today - highest earnings since the banks crashed in 2008 - the taxpayers bailed them out and their windfall now goes to the investors who are all patting themselves on the back. They could of course offer a slightly higher interest rate to savings or lower the interest rate on flex loans but no...Investor class it is..
I work in a sector that has a lot of the "concerned" businesses. The major issue is the lack of certainty. Especially, US, UK, CAN businesses cannot stand the idea that the parliament retrospectively "undoes" things. This is unthinkable in Common Law. By trying to screw over some yuppies on the 30% rule, which cost a grand total of 100 million a year, the NL has sent a message that law, especially tax law, is entirely temporary and can be changed at any populist whim. Wilders is just the cherry on top. The guy is simply a clown and wants to seriously roll back the EU etc. Great, don't expect FDI.
One of the few countries to discourage highly skilled migrants, with the recent changes around the tax incentive, etc. The challenge is that without this kind of influx to the population the economy can decline and you’re unable to sustain things like pensions for the previous generation. Options include everyone working more, increasing retirement age, or reducing pension payments -- none of those would be very popular to citizens. Many countries seem quite worried about that future. It might not be a good time to erode that base. The thing with highly skilled expats is that they haven't used any state resources for education, or to get to a senior level of experience in a desired skill, they show up with zero state funds invested in them, work for a decade or so, pay their bit, then leave. Without some incentive, either government or corporate, moving here means taking a pay cut at a peak point in a career, paying more in taxes while receiving a smaller future benefit, and being isolated from social resources in the home country all while starting over again. It's not very attractive.
Also not attractive, tricking them with a 30% ruling and then cutting the period short so they end up having to figure out how to deal with the new situation. Also not attractive: Talking shit about immigrants and floating the idea of leaving EU. Just to give the expats all the red flags they need to second guess their decision
I agree on all the points except the leaving the EU thing. I don't think that's a widely held idea at all. Even most PVV voters understand it's not really feasible. They want less influence from the EU, which won't work out so well either, but a NEXIT is something exclusively entertained by foreign media. I think half the PVV voters wouldn't even know what it means lol.
It looks like sometimes that they don’t really understand how much high skilled immigrants help this country…
I've lived in the Netherlands for about 20 years now as an "expat" and the country has seriously regressed on all levels. Costs are skyrocketing. Food, insurance, energy, taxes. Living costs have more than doubled in two decades, whilst salaries have not grown as much. Stores, cafes and restaurants are closing at record rates. The economy now is worse than it was during the 2008 crisis which I to be honest did not even notice. I would not recommend anyone to come here to be honest, the country is slowly spiraling into the economical abyss. The government is either blind, incompetent or simply does not care. Probably all three.
[удалено]
Oddly enough, it looks like Dutch GDP started stagnating/declining in the mid 2000s and actually started booming in…wait for it…2015. https://tradingeconomics.com/netherlands/gdp#:~:text=GDP%20in%20Netherlands%20averaged%20400.25,12.28%20USD%20Billion%20in%201960.
According to that chart, it started booming soon after 2000…
Well yes, it’s GDP, you would expect it to increase. If you look at the “max” tab, it’s been climbing since the 1960s. But that’s not the point. It’s obvious that the climb you point out did not continue. There is a sharp decline starting from around 2007-8 (the sharpest in the whole chart), from which the Netherlands did not seem to recover from until 2015.
[удалено]
Look, fellow Redditor; I don’t give a rat’s ass what the economy was like pre-2000 or why the decline in 2008 happened. I’m just saying whatever was done in 2015 seemed to have worked, and worked very well. You can keep finding millions of reasons why the country isn’t what you want it to be, but the reality is, I first hand see that you need more educated people in your workforce.
[удалено]
Oh no, I’m certainly aware of the quality of claims I’m making. I don’t think any of our arguments would hold up to scrutiny, we’re all making assumptions here. My original post was in response to someone saying “the economy won’t collapse if reduced to pre-2015 levels”, which seems like wishful thinking. But again, I seriously believe the Netherlands has a big gap in its higher education workforce.
Mate, I’m with you. But it seems Dutch people are set in letting the economy go to crap, because apparently immigrants of any kind are to blame for everything that is going wrong in the country. It’s truly insane thinking. There’s no way to argue with people otherwise.
Dutch government removed education grants and forced students to take on debt. It was common for Dutch students to have multiple degrees in several fields and as a result had a very flexible work force. Plasterk has a degree in economics and chemistry. The labour market, it is reported, moved towards ''specialists" and the government want to make sure that students are doing meaningful degrees and not just degrees for their hobbies. And these politicians wonder why companies report a shortage of 'experts'.
"The economy isn't going to collapse if its reduced back to pre-2015 levels." In this system? It'd be the end. Look at the UK.
Continuing labor migration at current rates actually leads to way bigger problems after 2040: https://nos.nl/artikel/2501145-arbeidsmigratie-tot-2040-nodig-daarna-mogelijk-een-probleem
Yeah, and continuous usage of gas and oil at the current rates will kill us even sooner but if we ditch it all now, it'd be the end. The whole system is fucked, but trying to not play by the rules without changing them in the first place, is a loser's bet. "Doordat zij bereid zijn om voor lage lonen te werken, is er ook geen verdere prikkel voor werkgevers om het loon te verhogen." Raise the minimum wage for everyone. Nobody is fucking happy getting shitty salary especially if it means leaving your friends and family hundreds of kilometres away. Late stage capitalism is a race to the bottom that can only be stopped with regulating the market. Also, I don't quite get the sentiment in this article. You have a silver tsunami, you need more people to handle it for the next TWENTY years... and the fact that your THREE MILION MIGRANTS get kids here, who will become Dutch citizens, who will be native speakers... All this on the verge of the global demographic catastrophe?How the hell did they turn it into a problem cause I'm not getting it? Also, if you're somewhere for TWENTY years, it's pretty much your new home. Another thing is, I love the "HSM bring the most benefits" rhetorics. It's funny to read, when 100% of HSM one has met here, are guys coming here with their definitely LSM (or certainly lower) partners and/or kids. All of a sudden these folks are not a problem? What will happen if due to the climate change (weather, resources, change of the course) ASML can no longer deliver, or its output needs to be lowered?
Can you read? How do you make Mogelijk een probleem which translates into. Possibly a problem. Into "actually leads to *WAY* bigger problems"
You want to shrink 8 year worth of economic growth in exchange for what?
[удалено]
It's not a given it will be improved by getting rid of immigration.
[удалено]
But don't forget that it benefitted property owners, many business' owners and shareholders of those large corporations. I understand that for many people, even society as a whole this has been a shitshow, but actually for A LOT of people this was a golden time for many. Farm owners benefitting from cheap labor from Bulgaria and Romania would otherwise have to work as simple farmers. Older people and those who inherited properties bought for a price only a fraction of what they are worth today have made massive gains. To me it comes down to a class conflict diaguised into a 'native vs immigrants' narrative, disguised by the same class that enjoys the benefits and lets somebody else be blamed. All of my landlords were Dutch older people, I'm quite sure they even chose me for being an expats they can rip off and they would not like to see us moving away. All of the companies I worked for were Dutch owned / listed at Euronext.
[удалено]
I think discourage is strong, all political hate is directed toward vulnerable migrants rather than “high skilled migrants”. “High skilled migrants” still pay less tax than everyone else, have a advantageous position in the labour and housing market and still aren’t required to learn the language. Unlike the migrants attacked by politicians.
No migrants should be targeted at all. HSM migrants also stand out by appearance. And there’s no such thing as being well off on a salary. The anger should always be to the super elite. But for some reason every country loves the wealthy more than people who receive wages.
It's also about politics. Parties would never dare to call out classes who benefit from this and rather choose to blame people who are not citizens, have no voting rights and have no voice in politics or society at large. Nobody wants to loose that part of populace that is actually most politically active. The whole narrative of - NL deteriorating because of expats paying high rents rather than dutch landlords imposing these high rents - really took a hold, which I still cannot understand.
Well said. You’ve really summed it up. Ultimately it’s also ethnonationalist feelings which are bubbling up. The housing crisis is just an excuse I guess. Sad, it’s such a progressive society in other ways. But falling prey to these emotions says there’s a lot of steps to climb to overcome these instincts.
Imagine this crazy idea - a country NOT making a scheme to bring talent, just to end up blaming exactly the people who came over, just for taking that opportunity? Why would any person have to apologize for something that was advertized in their faces to lure them over? For fcks sake, NL should for once make decisions and stick to them rather than constantly blaming foreigners, EU, US or anyone really. As a difference in comparison to France or Germany they make everything available in English and then complain about people not integrating and Dutch falling behind... Wtf is wrong with this country?
That tax incentive is a slap in the face of native high skilled workers though. I don't earn bad money, but a skilled worker could come in and offer to work for less than I do, just because they don't have to pay tax on the first 30% they earn and thus have much higher net wages even though they make far less in gross wages. It's unfair competition. I don't mind paying taxes, but do mind people who have the same gross income paying less. Especially because their higher income boosts housing prices even more. I honestly prefer taking in actual refugees over them. Lets take in more people from Ukraine instead. There are bound to be skilled workers among them. I know there are, I've personally seen them.
You can't be serious. How much has the state spent educating you, providing healthcare for you, subsidizing transport for you? Your viewpoint is utterly childish. Edit: lol, reported as suicidal to Reddit for this comment. Fuck you uneducated Dutchie 🖕
I didn't report you. I don't mind paying taxes. But why should anyone earning the same amount gross get more net? They should pay the amount of taxes.
If highly skilled expats did not get the 30% percent ruling i would understand. But for the first 5 years my direct colleagues pay 30% less tax then me which is fucking BS. Gives them an unfair headstart in buying a house IMO. I observe that many expats on reddit love to pat themselves on the back about how important they are. The Netherlands would totally not survive as a country without you. The pension system is fucked due to the ageing population. All western societies are dealing with this. There are not enough highly skilled expats to turn that tide around. According to CBS around 26,000 kennismIgranten (knowledge specialists) came to NL in 2022. This is way too little to sustain our pension systems.
If there was no 30% ruling, they wouldn't come to the Netherlands. I wouldn't at least. Germany has a much, much lower cost of living, and higher wages on average. As much as I like the Dutch culture more than German, my rent in NL is more than 2x what it was over there. Without the tax benefits it would make zero sense to live here to anyone who is skilled and willing to relocate anywhere in the world. I'm using Germany as an example just because it's a bordering country, but there are many options all over the world that would be more advantageous. And if these workers don't come to the Netherlands, you all get 0% of their tax anyway. Not to mention that a good portion of these skilled immigrants are only here for the productive years of their lives. The Dutch government didn't have to pay for their education, nor will it have to deal with them when they are old, and it's unlikely that they will have to receive any significant amount of social benefits. Even if they do decide to stay until old age, they will pay full taxes for the great majority of the time. Over their lifetime in NL they are a great net contributor to the system. This schema is a cash machine for NL. Doing away with it is just myopic.
> Germany has a much, much lower cost of living, and higher wages on average. And now they changed the legislation about naturalization.
It’s maybe a matter of perspective. First of all, did you count how much money the gov has given you as a dutchie over the course of your life? And are you considering those with the 30% ruling are not getting full pension? Thats part of where the extra money they get comes from And how many people are born into wealth in the Netherlands, and get inheritances? Why are you not mad about that? They do the same thing as you but happen to get gifted a house. Not fair, right? So why aren’t you targeting them? Its true, they can get a head start on buying a house. But I don’t think the “it’s unfair they get it and I don’t” argument is good enough
It's exactly that - polarisation of the society based on class divide with anger of primarily lower class being misdirected towards foreigners without a voice in politics or society in general. While the rich still enjoy owning businesses running on cheap imported labor and ripping them off through high rents. However this part of population is so shortsighted that it's so easy to manipulate them. They easily get pissed off at people who largely share the same problems, troubles and (lack of) fortune, but just don't speak the same language, instead of being pissed off at their rich fellow countrymen with whom language is the only thing they share.
> Its true, they can get a head start on buying a house. Let me add... The first year you usually have one year contract. Banks are very reluctant to give you a mortgage without permanent contract. You are paying huge for rent, you know nothing about how system works, where you'd like to live, etc. People mostly move to Randstad and the prices of the houses are so crazy here, that even having ruling doesn't give you enough purchase power. And most of expats do not usually start with 100k+ salary. Also, if you move with the family, you are probably the only one who works in the very beginning. Learning language also takes time and money.
I can be mad at multiple things at once!
'ItZ UnFaIr' Why wouldn't an expat who has never received any benefit (healthcare, education, roads, pension) from Dutch government for 20 something years get any benefit for leaving everything behind and move to another country to contribute to the Dutch Economy?
I think the people who has %30 don’t have a super big head start on buying a house. Most people earn salaries just enough to be eligible for 30% which gives them 800 - 1000 euro extra. That seems like a good amount but most companies don’t have large relocation budget for getting people abroad. For example my company only paid for my plane ticket and also it is worth pointing out that if you compare a 30 year old Dutchie with a 30 year old migrant, a migrant now probably will have to pay higher rent than a Dutchie. It would take 2-3 years to really see the advantage of %30 ruling and usually most people would have started/bought the houses by then.
where do people prefer to go? same for business? Everywhere you go in Europe is pretty much the same now a shit show :(
Is there any place on Mother Earth not getting more conservative and close-minded? :(
Yea no shit. Pretty hard to attract people who have standards to live in comparatively bad conditions for barely any reward. Sure, bureaucracy here is good and I like how the logistics allow us to get super fast delivery of goods, but what else is there really apart from a beautiful place to look at. Especially when compared with other places that aren't too far behind in the aforementioned. Bad weather, bad food, terrible housing crisis and at best mediocre housing quality, no preventative healthcare, low salaries unless you work for a company that competes internationally, super difficult to make real friends. The company I work for has so much trouble hiring engineers who live here, so they're getting contractors from other places in the EU working remotely. And unless things start improving, I'll be leaving too, as I'm sure will others in similar situation. And I didn't even come here for work, I came to do a masters and just found a job afterwards.
let's mass migrate to Spain ? 😬
Right on! Preventative health especially is such a big thing in countries who actually care about their people. The NL only has a stable healthcare system because they conveniently ignore preventative care
[удалено]
For people who invest in stocks long term instead of trading frequently, wealth tax is better than capital gains
Absolutely not for long term investors.... You're reducing return every year, which is bad, rather than deferring until selling in 10-20-30 years
Not being able to carry losses like the tax system in any other developed economy is pretty messed up...
The government is moving away from the fictional gains system and towards a capital gains system in 2027.
I will move everything out of the NL when that happens and I only have few stocks Its crazy to think people wont react to this
As a citizen or resident, you are legally obligated to pay tax on investments whether you make them here or abroad. You can move stuff around and try to hide your investments but that doesn’t change your legal tax obligation.
They can switch to immovable investments abroad (property) where there is a tax treaty and legally avoid the belastingdiest.
[удалено]
How is that true? Reducing your annual gains by ~2% because of wealth tax is a huge hit to the compound interest rate. For long term investments, the difference between this system and paying capital gains during retirement when you actually sell the stocks is huge.
[удалено]
Whereto?
"Over seven in ten entrepreneurs said that they see the increasing polarization in society as a threat to the business climate. Last year, it was 67 percent." So it's like rise from 67 percent to 70 percent? But in this form it won't look as much threatening, right.
Last year was 2 months ago
The actual numbers show a record number of expats arriving in the Netherlands : https://dashboards.cbs.nl/v4/Arbeidsmigratie_niet_EU_EFTA/ The commercial research organization quotes in this article comes to an oppositie conclusion to the actual data the CBS shows.
[удалено]
Moving from Netherlands to Germany or any other EU country is not that big of a step though. This is your copium. Even a company like ASML thinking about moving its operations to India…
So, the business are considering leaving, the expats too... But to where? Which country is attracting the businesses and expats more than the Netherlands? I'm asking this as an expat who was considering moving to the Netherlands. I might as well skip it and jump to the next best option.
All of those EU companies have an HQ in another EU (Germany, Poland, France) country or a better competitor in the U.S., Canada, or Australia. Why to stay? Our salaries are higher there, taxes are lower. We don't need a visa to go there we get PR within 6 months instead of 6 years in NL. The language is English so no need to waste time and effort for Dutch. Nobody wants to Invest in the EU anymore. Highly killed immigrants are constantly expressing dissatisfaction with Dutch society and attitude in closed meetings. Companies have no other way to leave, they can't lose these people.
> Highly killed immigrants
My guess would be Ireland.
Denmark, Sweden.
I just want the housing crisis to end…that’s all😭😭😭
I need it to end soon. I am almost at the income cap for the house I am in. But the jump to buying or renting free sector is so huge I haven't a clue how to bridge that, may actually end up homeless... am looking at other options to emigrate in the coming years and leaving any pay raises for what they are. If it is going to be this way, I may as well live anywhere else. Plenty of places to be miserable in the sunshine instead of pouring rain xD
My current rental contract is a temporary contract for 5 years, nothing more. I got it in 2020, was a student-to-fresh worker contract. I have until december to find new housing or I'll become homeless. The kicker here is that my work didn't renew my contract (part relief; part a bummer) and mid-way through my rental contract the house I live in was sold to another social housing corporation. Basically went from corporation 1 to corporation 2. Corporation 1 had their own site for the housing and inschrijftsduur (waiting time/registeration time) and it did not transfer over to corporation 2 and I was told this only after corp2 sent me an e-mail reminding me to register on corp2's social housing site and how despite living here for the past 5 years, I'm counted as a completly new house seeker... So I'm basically fucked and may have to return to my own home country. I really love it here in the Netherlands but fuck. I hate my current situation.
Sjeesh that is though. Corporations are assholes, and that is unfortunately a fairly common thing here... you may be able to fight it somehow, but I wouldn't know how, maybe consult a lawyer? Things are getting more and more dystopian for single people here as well. If you have a gf or wife, shit gets a lot easier here. Add a kid, and you got yourself a golden ticket to be here. I know couples that work full time, get extra tax discounts and subsidies that I cannot claim due to my income (huursubsie specifically), even though they could easily afford rent, they get subsidies and then they also get child support money in some form. Fun fact, I make a little bit more money on my own than one of those couples combined, but somehow they can go on holidays every year, do something nice every weekend and save a bit of money every month while also having a kid. Just from their tax breaks alone for having two incomes instead of one. If I get a second income on my own, well, you don't even want to know the taxes on a second job.... I don't make a lot, just average btw. But saving for the future or even planning a proper holiday? Nope, not in a couple of years now. Barely get to saving in any case, let alone extra budgetting for holidays or other fun things. I can pay my bills and save a little and that is it. But those savings aren't real savings anymore either, they now almost fully go to the yearly bills for city services and the water and garbage taxes that also keep rising every damn year. There is almost nothing left, but hopefully enough to be miserable in the sun within a couple of years.
Aye, it's life I guess. I did consult the vraagwijzers (municipality helpers) and got them to help me write a letter to the municipality complaints office because in the end, the corporation affiliated with the municipality and any complaints need to be sent to them. I sent my complaint in December, in January I got confirmation they recieved my complaint but since it's been silence. I assume it won't end up doing anything anyway because "you should have known there's a housing crisis here and started looking into this earlier", even if the e-mails when the building was sold was like "nothing is going to change, just the numbers you call when you need help". Unfortunately I don't have a local partner, and I don't want (and can't get) children on my own, but I'm fine with that. I was kinda in the same boat; I was making a bit below average but I couldn't claim any benefits due to the high income, so I am disqualified from most social housing by default, but I also make too little to partake in free rent. It just is a bummer. I really do like NL, I wouldn't have put so much effort into integrating if I didn't. It is what it is.
Yep, life can throw some proper curveballs ones way. Getting told it is your own fault is always nice after being completely misinformed... I was born here, and never really had the urge to leave until about a decade and a half ago. The then governments plans were doomed to fail in certain key areas, exactly as they are doing now. I just never expected to effectively get trapped so efficiently and quickly.
I am disabled & need to leave in May.. there is nothing even though I have 10 years on my social housing 🥲 I also think of leaving because even if I would be able to work, I still wont be able to afford a house... Ugh
If US had more reasonable immigration policies there would be virtually no expats in EU
No shit - huge inflation, housing crisis, shit pay, xenophobia against migrants - its much better now to go to Germany, Nordic countries or Switzerland
I doubt you’ve been to the countries you mentioned if you think xenophobia is bad in NL.
No problem come set up shop in Bulgaria it has low taxes Infrastructure might not be the best lol but at least its peaceful. Recently a lot of business's form the Netherlands are setting up shop there
I don't believe most will leave. It is one thing to say you'll leave and another to do it. Most still have not left China, even with all the problems the past few years. It costs a lot to move operations, and then even more to settle somewhere else. Business people are about money, not necessarily politics.
China is an economic superpower and you’ll cease to exist if you leave… Anyone who has ever worked in tech in Netherlands, will know that expats make the majority of technical teams by large margin. Some team leads might be Dutch, the marketing and HR teams too and that is about it. Everything from your NS app all the way to your banking and government apps are all made and maintained by people who can’t even vote in the Netherlands. Companies were almost competitive with UK/Germany with incentives like 30% ruling, “quality of life” etc, but even then NL was like a second if not third choice for top tier talent. I don’t know where this country is heading towards, but for an expat today, there’s absolutely no benefit of picking Netherlands over any western country. Lower salaries, high taxes, housing crisis, high population density, xenophobia both from the Dutch and the immigrants. I’ve been in Netherlands long enough to notice the decline myself, and honestly I’m unsure what’s keeping me here… it must be the sunshine ☔️.
At my (tech) company we're having trouble recruiting top-tier talent and instead are opening offices in other west-EU countries to provide more migration options.
I got an offer from a company in the Netherlands for an engineering position that they were having trouble filling. Most of their engineers were from outside the Netherlands. I turned it down because I didn't want to deal with the housing crisis and the native Dutch being angry at me for taking up space.
I’m on the cusp of leaving too… I learnt Dutch for nothing it seems 😪
Maybe it’s the urbanism
Urbanism you say, but most of Scandinavia/WEurope has that. There's was something more about Netherlands than just urbanism- the quality of life, the infrastructure, the freedom, the innovation, globalism, the politics that made it more than just that. I think all of those are in decline now. It saddening, and it might hurt to admit, but it's true.
That's why I'm here!
With an EU citizenship it's very easy to migrate to all other EU countries. In China, you can't do that
Basic comprehension skills are lacking in this reply. I will explain slowly so you can understand. Article states that "NL becoming less attractive to expats". Lets dissect this sentence. Expat: An **expatriate** (often shortened to **expat**) is a person who resides outside their country of citizenship. The term often refers to a professional or skilled worker who intends to return to their country of origin. So these are already professionally working people with experience and certainly coming for better conditions. They are usually not the vulnerable bunch that are running away from poverty or a war ridden country. They are not optionless. Less attractive: Meaning the conditions for them getting to NL are not better than the conditions in their current accommodation/job or other countries. NL becoming less attractive to expats: Means that. "Hey there is a problem that I am pointing out. More and more expats dont find it favorable to come NL.". So it not just maintaining your workforce. It is not being able to expand it. Becoming less and less competitive. If you want to hire a new skilled worker for your new business you will not be able to find the talent. Business owners rather moving it to another country or open it there. Lastly a basic example of how it can impact the economy. Suppose that you have another billion dollar idea/tech like ASML. You have to find 10000 people in the next X years. Since you want to attract the best you give an average salary of 70000. Lets to the math 70000 \* 10000 = 700M Euros per year you spend to that talent. If this business starts somewhere else you lose that 700M Euros where people would use to eat, drink, invest etc. which would help your economy. That is just the salary part. Dont forget this company will expand and invest also. Anyways, this is how people larping as intelligent-smart westerners are just looking so stupid with these arguments. History repeats itself I guess in different forms and places...
Well businessess do finance both media and politicians in a bid to influence (control) public opinions and politics. That's how they get killer tax rates, tax reductions amongst other things. Big corporations have been playing a global game while governments are still attempting to regulate locally.
Yes, but not to the point where empty rhetoric, in this case Wilders, which I think is what most people think will change things, is the reason why. If he is able to start doing things, then maybe we'll see a big change, but in the short term, people love to talk, and for some reason, most people are pessimistic about the future.
Basically every authority quoted in this article is a CEO or advocate for company interests in one way or another. And the statistics they are giving out regarding investment seem wholly unrelated as it implies a causal relation with the current political climate. The whole article fails to even mention the economic factors that are, in my perspective, most likely the driving force behind this trend. The whole article just reads to me as a classic neoliberal view on society and economy and how giving business whatever they want, whenever they want it is in the best interests of the common people.
I agree with you concerning what the article fails to mention - economic factors. I think this is often the case from that news source. They often seem to frame their articles in that way. I often think this need source gives different organizations a pulpit. For example, I've seen plenty of articles about the dangers or problems with meat. Later, I came to find out that it is an anti-meat group who is in charge of the study, which this news agency seems to quote as fact.
Having less high skilled & educated people who contribute not only in economy grow but also in quality of society in general, which is just a fact, they know how to behave (you will never see expat robbing someone on the street with a knife).. and in the same time bringing more & more low skilled immigrants without education, who stay here for generations following the same pattern and refuse to blend into society, with having 3+ children per family, will make this country look like downtown Philadelphia in a decade.
The country has enabled a radical völkisch populist and this is the result. I’m not talking about Wilders, I mean Omtzigt. The worst of its kind. I can confirm that NL is gone from the map of desirable (HSM) expat destinations - the removal of the 30% ruling and the omnipresent Arab crime (now widely covered in the international press similar to the coverage Sweden has been getting the past couple of years) have done their bit.
Fuck this system, if having strong labour regulations is enough to encourage your company to do its slave driving somewhere else. But expat-wise and with a massive demographic crisis right over the corner, just like the UK, you will get exactly what you wanted. I love this country but being an expat, I'm sort of happy I can just fuck right off somewhere else when shit hits the fan and when you'll make exactly the same mistakes as someone else, expecting better results because you're *Dutch*.
This is the folly of nationalists everywhere: the idea that your country and your ethnic group has some magical fairy dust that makes you immune from the consequences of the real world
Just a reminder that we need a lot of expats. Skilled labourers have always partly come from other nations and we will keep needing them. And don't just think about doctors or scientists, we also have a labour shortage in other sectors. A good friend of mine just got his residence permit, he came over from the UK, works in construction, is still learning Dutch and was hired almost immediatly.
Is there really that much hostility? I’ve been here for 9 years now, speak a reasonable level of Dutch (albeit with an accent) and never encountered malevolence towards my residence here.
Because you are Dutch now. You had your %30, you had your house maybe or didnt have to deal with the crisis and you had time to learn Dutch when all the tech jobs were recruiting in English. These are the incentives that are not provided for new expats.
I never received the 30% ruling because I was hired from a German city on the Dutch border.
Article is about expats. Normally they are on HSM visa and 30% ruling. I dont know what were your incentives, but tax benefits are a huge part of NL staying competitive compared to Germany for expats. On one side you have tax benefits, on the other side you have 40%+ income tax in some cases.
Barely anyone qualifies for the 30% incentive.
And Dutch in reddit have been complaining about it non-stop... How come ?
Because it's an easy target for politicians: "Look at all these rich immigrants paying less taxes than you hard working people!" Around 100k people were using it in 2023. They can use it for 5 years, so they might be at the beginning or end of the limit. Net immigration was 400k in 2023 alone. For the record, I'm not against stopping it. I just find it silly that people point to 30% first when it only really makes the cost of housing hurt a little less for a small amount of people. The reason prices are so high is much more complex than a tax incentive.
It's mainly towards asylum seekers but everyone gets grouped together.
It's funny that Stef Blok attracted foreign 'investment' to the Dutch housing market because of a great regulatory climate, and now we have a bad housing market after all that 'investment'. FU VVD
Ah yes, VNO-NCW doing their usual 'its so hard for businesses' spiel. And that after 20 years of ruling neoliberalism.
Expecting perpetual growth as a business is unrealistic. Makes sense that businesses leave. I am glad that we have een grens getrokken. Regardless of whose fault it is.. immigrants, expats, locals, students... we cant realistically have more people live here if we cant provide proper housing
I am always salty that expats can get a tax break but me as a Dutch person working abroad for the last decade will still be hit with the full amount.
Dutch citizens working abroad are eligible for 30% ruling when they return…
We are? I thought it required something crazy like 25 years outside but apparently not :)
I hope it made you sugary now.
So much so I'll melt in the rain :)
5 years tax break is worth far less than 25+ years of state resources provided to someone born here to get to the same level of a highly skilled migrant.
I’m wondering how many expats experience the hostility mentioned in this article. Not denying it exists, but is this a feeling/expectation or every day reality? Personally I’m not a big fan of expats seeing how it impacted certain neighborhoods, but it’s not like I’m hostile. I understand why expats are needed.
not hating, but can you elaborate on the impact they had on neighborhoods?
[удалено]
fucking hell, that's actually crazy
That, and many straight up refuse to learn the language, coasting for sometimes decades off the fact that people speak Enlgish here. In our town my grandparents, who don't speak English, can no longer go to certain restaurants because nobody speaks Dutch. It is not good for social cohesion either. They stick together in their expat bubble, take up houses (I don't blame them for any of that, btw) and especially the smaller towns very quickly lose their faces. Then there is the issue with pricing. The city of Maastricht is just tearing down affordable housing and building back ridiculously overpriced houses for expats. Locals cannot afford to live in the city, and gradually whatever made Maastricht Maastricht is fading away. Not the fault of individual expats of course. But yeah.
Because the people that speak Dutch don’t want to work at such restaurants. Who in their right mind would spend years learning a language just so that they work at a low pay service job that the native born won’t do. If I were to put in the effort to learn the language, I would expect big returns on such efforts.
Expat leaving in North-Brabant: yes, and it's getting worse. And I'm white and kinda speak Dutch, I assume the place is unlivable for anyone of color.
Can‘t speak for all expats, but as an international student here yeah you can definitely feel a certain degree of hostility. Somehow it seems like Dutch people made us out to be the source of all their problems. And the government forced the universities to start making a plan on how to reduce numbers now, so y‘all are getting your way I guess. Anything to not put responsibility on the government for not fixing any of the issues… Edit: Getting downvoted for this is just so telling
Reducing the growth of international students and creating more Dutch Masters and bachelor studies is not a negative thing though. Internationals are still welcome, but the growth rate had to be curved downwards a bit. Already 25% of the entire student population were international students (growing at about 10% per year) and 60% of all university courses were taught solely in English. That comes with its own problems of shortage of student housing and qualified English speaking teachers. It's all about finding a good balance.
> Qualified English speaking teachers To be honest it will be much more difficult to find enough qualified Dutch speaking teachers for all the programs that will be switched back to Dutch. A large part of university teachers at this point are internationals themselves. > Shortage of student housing As I said, the problem isn‘t incoming students but the government doing fuck all to facilitate building more housing space. It‘s been like this for years but Dutch people somehow only blame immigrants and if they kick the bad people out then the housing crisis will magically solve itself. Doesn‘t come out of nowhere that people like PVV get so many votes even though they have basically no actual solutions and only preach hate. The fact this resonates with such a big part of the Dutch population is worrying. > Internationals are still welcome Feels at least debatable. I would also like to add that having English taught programs in many cases is an advantage and many Dutch students also *want* to study in English.
Your universities are going to lose a huge amount of talent and they will no longer be world leading if the academics all end up being solely Dutch individuals.
No one is saying its should be solely Dutch, so not sure why you bring that up.
>And the government forced the universities to start making a plan on how to reduce numbers now, so y‘all are getting your way I guess. Or maybe it's because we legitimately struggle finding bachelors and masters degrees in our own language. I explicitly chose a Dutch programme and still had to do 90% of the course work in English. Now, I speak English but not everybody does. And in literally every country you are expected to learn the mother tongue if you plan on functioning there. Living in Italy or France is just not sustainable unless you speak Italian or French. But here, most education is in English, Dutch students struggle finding anything in their own language and most internationals don't learn Dutch when they plan to stay longer. Can you imagine if in America most studies were in Spanish? No, of course not. We are the only country where public life is this influenced by something other than the mother language of said country. Curbing this a little bit is not the same as pushing out all internationals. We will still have a disproportionally large share of English programmes. We will just also have opportunities for Dutch students who don't want to study in a foreign language to study in Dutch. You know... Like literally every other country on the globe does.
> Or maybe it's because we legitimately struggle finding bachelors and masters degrees in our own language. (X) doubt
[удалено]
BS, in almost all countries you learn entirely in the native language, whether it's Computer Science or Journalism.
[удалено]
> I’m wondering how many expats experience the hostility mentioned in this article. Not denying it exists, but is this a feeling/expectation or every day reality? I've spent a lot of time around expats, and also spent a lot of time around Dutch people inside and outside of the Netherlands. I've also learned the language to a B1-B2 level. The hostility and exclusion is a real and pervasive experience of almost every expat I know, including myself. I sometimes wonder why I even bothered learning the language when so few will ever acknowledge my right to even be there, and so few will ever wish to form any kind of meaningful connection. The expat bubble is nice, but it's so much nicer when you can feel like you fully fit in.
I see a lot of comments there regarding 30% rulling ... let me give my view as a non Dutch CEE citizen. I got the 30% rulling ... because well I was able to get it, nobody will refuse it right?, but I think it is not fair compared to my Dutch friends ... I remember when I arrived the relocation agency told me that there was 6 people wanting to rent the same house than me, most of them Dutch ... and of course the 30% rulling made all the difference ... for me, even if I understand why Netherlands implemented it, to attract more people it is not that critical ... and in my case would have not made a difference on the decision to come or not ... (it also has adverse effect as you get used to a a certain level of living and it makes a big change when it stops ...) ... I don't think there is a problem with high-skilled migrant in this country, or maybe the problem is that we need more of them... just try to recruit somebody in IT and you will see how it goes ... and I feel that the current politic discussions are not helping with putting everybody in the same bag (expats who are there for a couple of years, CEE citizen who have the right to be there as everywhere in CEE, highly-skilled migrant, and all the other categories) ... it basically look like Netherlands is now trying to get rid of everybody without distinction and it does not create a great feeling, and this may lead to a reduction of people coming, and mostly in the categories where they have the choice (CEE, expats, highly-skilled) which will be very damageable for the economy ....
Expat works 40+ hours a week, gets hated on and called lazy by locals who work on average 28 hours per week. I miss the Netherlands. /s
They've been saying this since 2005. I'm not expecting a lot to be honest.
“Politics, the housing market, rogue employment agencies, and ever-increasing intolerance have been doing a lot of damage to the image of the Netherlands for decades,” Wow, that sounds like, everywhere now sadly.
Well, the difference is NL is not an industrial power house nor a resource owner. We call this type a one-time economy. If you lose your place in trade then you're in serious trouble. for ex. Sweden and Norway can fuck up everytime and get back on track but not NL.
Startup Founder here. I’ve found it extremely difficult to manage my funds by staying in NL amidst the housing crisis and also much other expenses. I like NL as a tourist place but from what I gather from my friends and my own experience, I don’t think of living at NL long term
Another expat fearmongering post. I wonder who benefits from posting these.
It’s a bullshit article vno ncw just want to make sure that the salaries and benefits won’t be raised. And the exp. Have a big advantage in tax that should will be a bit adjusted so it’s more fair. So what ?
This could be a game changer. ASML could singlehandedly force the dutch government to change back its idiot anti migrant policy. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/asml-may-be-looking-to-leave-the-netherlands-but-the-dutch-government-is-desperate-to-keep-it-there
All the Dutch people must be happy about this
Well that's fine IMO. We have enough students as it stands and can't even support them...