Gay populist Pim Fortuyn was the first to tap into those concerns before he was gunned down by an environmentalist in 2002. Two years later, a Moroccan-Dutch man killed filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh, providing another flashpoint.
Recent governments have tightened immigration laws and pushed to integrate immigrants better, introducing compulsory Dutch language and society lessons.
But such policy changes take time to produce results and critics say governments in the 1980s failed to see the downside of immigration, blinded by multiculturalist policies.
“It’s not too much to ask that people who come here to share our values,” said Theo Verstappen, 53, a bus driver from Gouda.
The debate may surprise outsiders used to seeing the Netherland’s open policies on drugs and prostitution as totems of a liberal national psyche.
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