7 January 2008

VOORBURG – About a quarter of the Turkish and Moroccan men who married in the Netherlands in 2006 brought their marriage partner over from their country of origin. That is much less than five years earlier.

Of Turkish men who married in 2001, 56 percent brought their partner from their homeland, along with 57 percent of Moroccan men during the same year. This emerged from figures that Statistics Netherlands (CBS) published on Monday.

The CBS says that the decline in the number of migration marriages may be a result of the measures introduced in 2004 to set stricter requirements on the immigration of marriage partners. Other factors, like integration, will also have played a role, says the CBS.

Second generation immigrant youth, for instance, often prefer to marry a partner who has also grown up in the Netherlands, rather than someone from their parents' homeland.

The majority of Turkish men who married in the Netherlands in 2006 chose for a Turkish bride from the Netherlands (54 percent) or from Turkey (27 percent). The number of migration marriages fell from about 1,100 in 2001 to 400 in 2006. Of the Moroccan men who married here, 23 percent brought their partner from Morocco. The number of migration marriages in this community fell from 1,000 in 2001 to 360 in 2006.

Only one in ten of the Turkish and Moroccan men who married in 2006 wed a native Dutch woman. This comes to about 150 marriages.

[Copyright Expatica News + ANP 2008]

Subject: Dutch news