Verlenging naturalisatietermijnen

Reactie

Vraag1

As a student who has been studying in a mathematics adjacent field in one of the top universities in the country for a few years, I object against the decision to increase the naturalization term from 5 to 10 years.

While I do have a conflict of interest in expressing this opinion since I would possibly like to apply for naturalization in the future – I also believe that this change will be quite detrimental to retaining qualified working professionals/students that come from abroad, which will directly hurt the labour competitiveness of the Netherlands, especially in highly-specialized sectors that require some kind of post-secondary or even higher education level. Speaking on it purely for my specific academic field, even though the Netherlands has many great institutions that provide an excellent quality of education overall, compared to top instuitions in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, or Switzerland, both the quality of research and salaries are worse. This can cause educated in these specialized fields to seek better opportunites abroad.

Personally, I am going to be attempting to continue my education in one of the countries I listed prior, since even though I have significantly enjoyed my time in the Netherlands, and really love the country and its people, I'm feeling increasingly targeted by exclusionary policies like this increase to the naturalization period. One of the main competitive aspects of the Netherlands for me was how accepting the people and the government were of expats/international students, since I felt like the government in particular understood the value that these people were bringing to their country. This definitely has started to reverse.

I also have to state that I do understand that there is an abuse of this naturalisation system where individuals who do not integrate and/or contribute to the Netherlands at all still acquire citizenship, the current approach of taking a shotgun to every individual seeking to be naturalized in the future can impact the quality of labour in specialized industries.

Best Regards.