Immigrants Need Not Apply

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With its brown cafes and red lights and a population as varied as its famous rijsttafel banquets, the Netherlands has long symbolized liberal values. And so recent initiatives promoted by Rita Verdonk, Minister for Integration and Immigration, have come as a shock, even as they tap into the country's anxieties over its immigrant population. In late January she proposed that everyone in the country should speak Dutch in public life, although it wasn't clear how that could be enforced. Then she decided to tackle the issue at its root: she took off for Kenya, where she urged refugees from war-torn Somalia...