We know what’s coming and we are prepared.
🚷 🇳🇱 📊 Die Welt has an interview with a co-author of the groundbreaking Dutch study on the net economic costs of immigration, which has sparked a huge controversy in the Netherlands. The top line finding is that immigration has cost
🔶️ the Dutch state an average of €17 billion per year since 1995, mainly in providing generous welfare benefits to unemployed migrants. Work migrants from Western (blue) & non-Western (black) are the only net contributors. Asylum seekers are the biggest net drain.
🔶️ The other finding is that migrants who don't integrate into the labor market stay in the Netherlands the longest, along with migrants who arrive for family reunification. Immigrants who adapt successfully tend to take their skills and leave the Netherlands,
🔶️ often heading to the US or UK where salaries are higher and taxes lower. Study co-author Jan H. van de Beek describes the system as a sort of welfare magnet in which the least-integrated immigrants stay the longest and cost Dutch taxpayers the most.
🔶️ The University of Amsterdam, which employs some of the study's authors and helped finance it, has since distanced itself from the study, since pointing to any downsides of immigration, no matter obvious and empirically demonstrable, is still taboo among mainstream circles.
🔶️ This, of course, is part of what drives European voters to populist-right parties -- the disconnect between what they see and experience every day and the airbrushed world within the "opinion corridor" (to use the Swedish term) of opinions deemed socially acceptable.
🔶️ Given what we know about immigration in Germany, the results of a major study like the Dutch one would yield nearly identical results here. Which is why it will very likely never happen. The objective reality of the effects of German immigration policy would be too disturbing.
📎 Andrew Hammel
📝🇺🇸❌🇮🇷 - On the Brink: Showdown in the Middle East
Amid an escalating American buildup, it’s clear Witkoff’s list of demands is more of a request for surrender. Accepting the abolition of its nuclear program and limitations on its ballistic missile force would leave Iran powerless to defend itself in any future conflict, which is the entire point of asking for these “concessions”. This demarche is a poison pill meant to justify further action when Iran rightly refuses it or, should they be foolish enough to actually accept it, will make the job of Israel and the U.S. easier when they inevitably tear up any agreement to conduct strikes anyway. The goal here for Tel Aviv and Washington isn’t peace and anybody who thinks they actually care about protesters needs to get their head checked; they want a final showdown with Iran to remove it as an obstacle to themselves in the Middle East.
For those that don’t remember, in the lead up to the 12 Day War last year...
The Democrats got new talking points, but the question is why this sudden shift in direction that betrays a part of their lunatic base. Something really shifty is going on over there.
EDWARD DOWD
🇺🇸 White House: U.S. exits Hague tribunals and Venice Commission
The United States is withdrawing from two international criminal tribunals based in The Hague and from the Venice Commission, as part of a broader disengagement from 66 global organizations, according to a White House statement.
The U.S. will no longer participate in the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which prosecutes remaining cases from the former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide. The move reflects a wider recalibration of American foreign policy under President Donald Trump, aimed at distancing the U.S. from bodies seen as undermining national sovereignty or offering limited return on investment.
This withdrawal underscores Washington’s shift away from multilateral judicial structures and toward a more unilateral, interest-driven approach in international affairs.
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