Verlenging naturalisatietermijnen

Reactie

Vraag1

My husband and I moved to the Netherlands from South Africa because of a work opportunity. The Netherlands is an attractive location for South Africans for various reasons, i.e., work opportunities, "close" distance to SA, smaller language barrier because of Afrikaans in SA, no time difference to SA and the 5 year naturalization process.

When we left home, we left with the intention of making this our home. We are taking dutch lessons, learning about bitterballen and the "Links Rechts" song, trying to do better for the environment by cycling and recycling and giving our all at work to contribute to our companies success.

However, until we have citizenship, we will have an uneasy feeling. 5 years is a reasonable amount of time to deal with the unreasonable feeling. However, 10 years is too long.

There are better ways to support naturalization - like raise the bar, don't extend the period. Make the naturalization test more comprehensive - intensive dutch tests, real life scenarios, test on current affairs. You could also add in things like volunteer work for a certain amount of hours.

Give people a choice - stricter testing or longer period.

I hope you will take my message into consideration. I have spent almost 2 years here and I love it. But I want to feel at ease knowing I have a long term future here.