http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/11/922941AB-4DF5-47EF-87DA-1D726D9F1DB0.html
Mark Baker
For 30 years, from the 1960s through the 1990s, the official Dutch policy toward its growing population of unskilled Islamic "guest workers" was one of "multiculturalism."
That is, the government actively encouraged diverse groups -- from Morocco, Turkey, and other countries -- to maintain their linguistic and cultural identities.
Political scientist Andre Krouwel says the emphasis is on 'integration' not 'multiculturalism'
Andre Krouwel, a political scientist at Amsterdam's Free University, says the policy was not based on any idealistic notion of the virtues of diversity, but rather a cold calculation that the new immigrants should not be encouraged to stay.
"Ever since the 1960s, the subsequent Dutch governments took an approach toward minorities by which they assumed that these people were temporary workers, would stay here a limited period of time, and would go back to their country of origin. They always denied the Netherlands was an immigration country."
