ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with some dilemmas created by restrictive immigration policies. It discusses some aspects of the Dutch debate on immigration policy, including a recent concrete case. This case highlights the sort of collision between moral intuition and policy characteristic of the immigration issue. Immigration or the issue of access to, membership of or residency in a political community unsettles both political theory and practice. The issue of immigration was slow to make its way into the social and political consciousness of the prosperous Western Europe. Politicians, except xenophobic ones, never liked the issue. Although Western European countries differ quite markedly in their political culture and their sense of nationality, their reaction to the growing demand for admission to citizenship has been similar in most basic respects. In addition to economical usefulness, the standing criteria for immigration are family reunion and official refugee status.
