Vlaams Belang supports 'guest workers'

In several new brochures put out by Vlaams Belang, the party is allowing for possible immigration from outside the EU.

A brochure titled "Aging and the job market" says: "Of course we want to uphold the migration freeze of 1974, but it is possible that non-EU citizens will fill in 'bottleneck vacancies' on the long term". Such vacancies are defined as jobs for which no other worker could be found, either because the working conditions are unfavorable and do not attract Flemish unemployed, or because there are no qualified natives.

The brochure goes on to demand testing of the language as well as knowledge of Flemish norms before the application is considered.

The brochure goes on to say that "people with a criminal record or political extremism are not welcome." A note taken to be directed at Muslims.

2 comments:

Snouck said...

I do not understand what VB means by "migration freeze of 1974". Also to support migration from non-EU countires "to counter the aging population" is silly. It undermines the wages of the workers that are already in Belgium. Also the immigrants age also so what is the point of importing foreigners? They have parents too, which they can quickly (3 years) into Belgium. And afterwards they can come to The Netherlands and all other EU-countries too.

The only reason I can see the VB is taking this stance is that they are afraid of the laws that have been passed to specifically target and corner the VB.

Esther said...

I had no idea, either, so I looked it up:

On August 1, 1974 by means of a simple decision of the Belgian Cabinet, the government put a strict limit on new immigrants, allowing entry only for people with qualifications that were not already available in the country. This decision, which was similar to the official ban on immigration, was also accompanied by a policy on legalizing foreigners residing clandestinely in Belgium. The latter measure benefited some 9,000 foreigners, who were granted residence permits in 1975.
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While immigration was officially ended in 1974, the steady influx of immigrants did not stop. Factors here included the reuniting of family members, for long authorised by Belgium, the recognition of the right to asylum, work permits conceded in highly specific sectors, the authorisation of residence for study reasons, the selective permeability of frontiers spelled out in the Treaty of Maastricht (1993) and the presence of many international institutions (mostly in Brussels). These exceptions have kept the rate of foreigners present in Belgium at a stable level since 1980 despite the considerable number who have taken Belgian nationality, as a result of reforms in the nationality code of 1984, 1991, 1995 and 2000.
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