By Paul Belien, Brussels Journal
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Last Monday the Dutch Central Statistics Office CBS presented its latest demographic forecast. The figures show that the immigrant population in the Netherlands will grow from 19% of the population today to almost 29% by 2050. By the middle of the century the Netherlands is predicted to see its overall population grow to 16.8 million, from 16.4 million today. However, while the number of non-immigrant Dutch will decrease by 1.2 million in the next four decades, the number of immigrants will increase by 1.6 million.
Today 80.8% of the Dutch population is indigenous. According to the CBS this number will decrease to 71.5% in 2050. The number of immigrants from Western countries (mainly East Europeans) will rise from 8.7% today to 12.5%, and the number of non-Western immigrants from 10.5% to 16%.
The CBS defines "non-Western immigrants" as people with at least one parent born in a non-Western country (Japan and the former Dutch colony of Indonesia are included in the group of Western countries). The growth of the Dutch immigrant population is located mainly in the second non-Western immigrant generation, i.e. young people who are born in the Netherlands from at least one parent born in a non-Western country (excluding Japan and Indonesia).
The growth of "traditional" immigrant groups--ethnic Moroccans, Turks and people from Surinam, another former Dutch colony--will diminish compared with "new immigrants" from China, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. CBS researcher Jan Latten said that although the number of ethnic Moroccans, Turks and Surinamese will keep growing and marital import is a widespread phenomenon among these groups, their average number of children per family declines--which is not the case among Iraqis, Iranians and Afghans.
Third generation Moroccans and Turks are no longer considered to be immigrants by the CBS. Since third generation immigrants are not considered to be immigrants--and many of the latter are Muslims--the CBS figures do not indicate the rise of the Muslim population in the Netherlands. At present there are 1 million Muslims on a total of 16 million inhabitants in the Netherlands. At over 6% of the population this is proportionally the largest Muslim immigrant population of all Western nations, except for France which has 6 million Muslims on a total of 60 million inhabitants. The Muslims are younger than the indigenous population and tend to be concentrated in the cities. This causes problems which were addressed in two recent official reports. The first, by the Intervention Teams for Interethnic Relations, was published last Wednesday. Another, by the National Anti-Terrorism Coordinator, last month. I report on their findings here.
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