Pearsall's Books

So, still wired from hammering out the previous post I went and perused around the net and found, via the always reliable Randy McDonald, a story entitled Witamy! from the Silt3 blog. Consider this a companion piece to my "Europe 40% Muslim in 2025? What are you talking about, Mark Steyn?" posting.

Here's an excerpt:

"The total number of emigrants was 112,000, whereas only 90,000 people, mostly Europeans, settled in the Netherlands. [...]

Turks and Moroccans were especially likely to remain in their homelands in 2004. Arrivals from those countries fell by 40%, from 11,600 in 2003 to 6,800 in 2004. The stricter rules for “marriage immigration” would seem to be a logical explanation for this drop, but the rules did not take effect until late in 2004. So their effect should not be apparent until 2005. [Demographer Jan] Latten speculates that many Turks and Moroccans stayed away because of the less welcoming climate, or because of better economic conditions in their homelands.

Only the Poles went against the trend of falling immigration. Since their country joined the European Union on 1 May 2004, they have been arriving here in greater numbers. The number of immigrants from Poland doubled last year, to nearly 5,000 people.

As for the emigration of 112,000 people, the highest total ever, the Central Bureau of Statistics has no explanation. Around half of this number are autochtonen [native Dutch people]. Some are leaving to retire abroad; others for work or study."

As Randy points out, if at most a million of the Dutch population is Muslim, and if 50,000 non-ethnic Dutch left the country, then that is at least several percent of the Muslim population gone in a single year.