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12/05/2006Ayaan Hirsi Ali: hero or phony?

Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk claims to be decisive and consistent; she "steers a straight course through the sea". She says her immigration and asylum policies are strict but fair.

Perhaps then the Liberal Party (VVD) minister could tell us the difference between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Taida Pasic?

Somali-born Hirsi Ali lied when she was 22 in order to get asylum in the Netherlands and improve her life. 

Kosovar Taida Pasic, 18, effectively lied to get a tourist visa to re-enter the Netherlands in 2005 to complete the Dutch education she was receiving before her family was refused asylum here.

Verdonk took a personal interest in ensuring Pasic, whom she publicly branded a liar, was deported from the country before she could take her final exams here. She has to do that in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

How decisive and consistent. Verdonk does not like liars, she says, and liars don't get past her immigration officials. Well not now, anyway. Hirsi Ali is a different story.

*sidebar1*Verdonk says Hirsi Ali would not have got in to the Netherlands had she been minister at the time. However Hirsi Ali has nothing to fear now despite the porkies she told 14 years ago.

News programme Zembla reported on 11 May that Hirsi Ali hid her actual name, Hirsi Magan, and her age when she sought asylum here in 1992. Immigration officials might otherwise have established she was under the care of the UNHCR in Kenya.
She was granted asylum here in a record five weeks. How come?

She told a heart-rending story about having to flee Somalia to escape an arranged marriage, went to a refugee camp in Kenya, and from there got to the Netherlands. Once here, she faced the constant fear of retribution from her angry family.

The right story for an asylum seeker.




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