ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — The world lives on West Kruiskade Street: Turkish butchers slip into clean morning aprons, dreadlocks lift in the breeze and steam whirls from Chinese kitchens before vanishing amid scents of African spices and salted fish.
Then comes the night. Storefront shutters slam tight. The falafel boys shelve their pita bread and girls in head scarves drift toward home amid sputtering neon. It is the time of junkies and pickpockets and dark-skinned men with silver in their smiles.
The night worries the Dutch. Long considered one of Europe's most tolerant societies, the Netherlands these days is casting a harsh eye toward immigrants. In a move condemned by human rights groups, the nation's parliament voted in February to deport 26,000 foreigners requesting political asylum. The decision underscores fears -- amplified by the Madrid bombings in March -- that the nation is failing at integration and poor, frustrated immigrant communities are threatening Dutch culture.
"The Dutch have become less tolerant," said John Kanton, who came here from Suriname 40 years ago as a boy. "The Madrid bombings have the Dutch thinking, 'Hey, what's going on? What's happening to our way of life?' "
Barry Madlener, a member of Livable Rotterdam, the dominant political party in the City Council, isn't ashamed of feeling that way.
"We have had this political correctness in Europe," he said. "But now there is anxiety and strange feelings about foreigners coming here who do not want to live in a Western way.... We want the national government to say we as a country can only handle so many immigrants. We want zero immigrant growth."
This clanging port city on the Rotte River is a study in European immigration. One-third of Rotterdam's population of 600,000 are minimally educated immigrants with little command of the Dutch language. If trends continue, according to a city government study, the nonnative community will grow about 58% by 2017 -- a dramatic demographic shift in a nation where half a century ago there were few foreigners.
As a young man, Kanton boxed on these streets of cawing seagulls and grizzled brick.
His father brought the family to help rebuild a city splintered by World War II. The Kantons now own five boxing-equipment stores -- all named Hercules -- throughout the Netherlands. Kanton, 45, is a well-built middleweight with coils of gray in his hair. He speaks Dutch, German and English. He understands Turkish.
One needs such skills to navigate the syntaxes on West Kruiskade, which is as much a narrative of changing cultures as it is a street.
"You have Chinese, Moroccan, Portuguese," he said, walking toward a boxing event poster on his wall. "Look at these fighters. Turkish. Yugoslav. Suriname. Everyone comes to this street. Rents are cheap, and over the years you can watch the different groups come and go."
He glanced out the window. So many sepia-colored faces, many of them adrift between native land and new home. Discrimination, said Kanton, was the subtle, polite kind, like a murmur of elevator music in the background of Dutch society.
"When I first came, there were mainly just immigrants from Italy and Spain," he said. "But now you've got them from all kinds of countries, and that makes a difference."
The Netherlands welcomed guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s. And the Dutch, priding themselves on their embrace of human rights, accepted tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers escaping wars and turmoil in Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Africa and Afghanistan. Thousands of petitions for asylum have been rejected over the years, but the Dutch government did not have a clear policy on repatriation. The new asylum law -- opposed by the nation's churches -- will deport 26,000 people over the next three years.
"The Madrid bombings will mean a green light for the Dutch government extradition policies," said Mohammed, a Sudanese reluctant to give his last name because his asylum petition was pending. A political activist, Mohammed escaped Sudan on a boat after death threats from security police. He now worries that his dramatic story won't win him refuge in the Netherlands.
The quandary over the fate of asylum seekers such as Mohammed coincides with rising unemployment and crime in immigrant communities. Criminals with foreign backgrounds make up 55% of the country's prison population. The unemployment rate for non-Western immigrants is 14%, compared with a 4% rate among the native Dutch population. Joblessness among Moroccans and Turks, two of the largest minorities, went from a ratio of one unemployed for every 11 workers in 2001 to one in six in 2003.
