1/25. #Immigration into Western Europe - a big topic. A lot of countries have unreliable data. The Netherlands has one of the most reliable data sets, and makes this information easily available. A data-driven story. Graph showing number of non-western immigrants since 1995. ⤵️ 
2/25. [Made this thread for @bronzeagemantis because he has referred several times to the Dutch in his podcasts. I think he said they are hopelessly lost. Perhaps he is right?]
3/25. This data shows the number of immigrants to the Netherlands with a "non-western background". Decrease after 2002 when populist Pim Fortuyn emerged (but was assassinated). Strong increase in the last few years, following lead of Angela Merkel.
4/25 Now definition of "Non-western" is interesting. It means a person who is born ("first generation"), or of whom one of the parents was born ("second generation"), in any country in Africa, Asia (except Indonesia or Japan), Latin America or Turkey.
5/25. In 1995, the Netherland had 15.4 million inhabitants, making it the European country with the highest density. From the 1960s onwards, large numbers of people from Turkey and Morocco had started immigrating to the Netherlands, in the first instance men who came to work.
6/25. So from 1995 to 2018, a 23-year period, saw immigration of non-western immigrants of 1.42 million people, or more than 9% of the 1995 population. The lowest yearly number of non-western immigrants was 36,000 in 2005. The highest number in 2016 with more than 100,000.
7/25. Now to put that in perspective - these are very high numbers for a small population. Adding more than 100,000 means adding the population of the 30th largest city of the country in one year. And of course, this only counts non-western immigration.
8/25. It does not pick up "western immigration" which is also significant and also includes countries with very different cultures, such as countries from the Balkans or Eastern Europe.
9/25. In the 20-year period from 1998 to 2018 the number of people with a "non-western immigration background" increased in absolute terms by more than 1 million - from 8.2% of the total population in 1998 to 13.1% in 2018 against a growing population.
10/25. Do keep in mind that all of this just tracks incoming immigration. It does not track emigration (although the Dutch keep statistics on this also). It also does not of course track illegals immigrants, of which they are clearly many (although hard to say how many).
11/25. In the statistics, we also see a clear net outflow of the local Dutch population - there is a clear net emigration. Coupled with a net influx of western and non-western immigrants, who are relatively younger than the original Dutch population.
12/25. Finally, the statistics are somewhat misleading if you want to know, crudely, "how many foreigners" are in the country. From the statistical "third" generation, one does not count as an immigrant.
13/25. A person born in the Netherlands to ethnically Turkish persons each of whom is also born in the Netherlands is statistically not picked up as an immigrant or even as having a non-western background, even though all 4 of his grandparents are for instance born in Turkey.
14/25. Very interesting figures. Food for thought. Is it the "end of Europe" or a "Grand Replacement" of the population? As some doomsayers like to write about...
15/25. On the one hand, you would say that seems overstated. Only 5% of the Dutch population is muslim according to the statistics. On a population of about 17 million, 13 million are "original Dutch".
16/25. But if you dig deeper in the numbers, you do start to understand some of the pressures the Dutch seem to be under. In 1998 there were 13 million "originally" Dutch people in the country - and about 2.5 million foreigners half of whom "non-western".
17/25. Today, there are still only 13 million originally "Dutch" people - local population is flat. Now there are 4 million non-locals, of which 2.6m "non-western", but noting that among the "originally Dutch" population there are those who are third generation immigration.
18/25. And, the non-western immigrants are clustered in one part of this small country - the vast majority of the immigrants are in the large cities in the west of the country - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Hague, etc. Relatively few immigrated to the north and the countryside.
19/25. Take Rotterdam, the second city of the country. Population about 630,000. Only half of these are "Dutch". Another 30,000 are immigrants with a western background (Germans, Eastern Europeans, etc.), more than 180,000 are Turkish or Moroccan immigrants, or other non-western.
20/25. So in the second city of this country, the original population is now less than the majority. Looking at the age composition of "ethnic Dutch" versus "newcomers", the original population will become a minority in significant areas of their own country.
21/25 Is the Netherlands a traditional "immigration country", used, like the US is, to a steady influx of newcomers? Is there a "Dutch dream" like the American dream, of creating new businesses and re-inventing yourself with a relatively modest welfare state?
22/25. Not really. Netherlands is a small, very densely populated country, with a very generous social welfare state supported by high levels of taxation. Until late in the 1960s it was overwhelmingly homogenous ethnically.
23/25. Netherlands had some colonies but nothing like France or Britain - no real tradition of absorbing large populations from an "empire".
24/25. So in a relatively very short period of time, basically since the end of the Cold War, there have been really meaningful changes of demographic composition. All of this with record numbers of immigration continuing precisely since 2016...Acceleration?
25/25. Right-wing populists get about 10-20% of the vote. So >80% of the population does not vote that way. However, if the original Dutch population had been asked the question in 1995, if they would have liked this type and extent of immigration, would they have said Yes?
PS: Someone do same for Germany? UK? France?
