# Brief uit BoTu
Florian Cramer


Lieve mensen in Carnisse,

I often come to your gezellige neighborhood although I don't live there, but in the similarly colorful neighboor Bospolder-Tussendijken (Delfshaven). Maybe one day, I will be able to bike through the Maastunnel with closed eyes...

As a Rotterdammer without a Dutch passport (but EU nationality), I am wrestling with an issue that I guess many people in Carnisse wrestle with as well: Should I naturalize, and swap my passport for a Dutch passport? For me, this question becomes particularly urgent every four years, before the Dutch parliamentary elections, when I cannot vote. And see politicians, even of the mainstream parties, trying to score with anti-immigrant rhetoric. 

In Rotterdam, it was also urgent in 2016 when there was a referendum on the "Woonvisie" of the municipality, and only Dutch nationals could vote. Now, five years later, we know how catastrophic it was that this referendum failed - with what's been happening in the Fazantstraat and the Tweebosbuurt, and the impossibility to still find affordable an affordable home in Rotterdam. Now we can tell ourselves that we were lucky that we moved into our neighborhoods earlier, when most people considered them problematic neighborhoods, and enjoy our place there and the multitude of people, small shops, daily hustling and street life around us. Newcomers might not even be able to find anything inside Rotterdam itself, live anti-kraak, with shady rental contracts or under similar insecure circumstances.

Dutch nationality would not only make voting possible, it's also a mental thing: to make a decision for yourself that your future - and maybe that of your family and children - is here, with no strings attached and no backup parachute. But then many of us have family and relatives in their countries of origin, often need to take care of family members remotely. If you lose the nationality of your country of origin, this could mean trouble with paperwork you need to do there, or decisions that need to be made.

Double nationality is difficult - for most of us: impossible - to obtain in the Netherlands, since it's only allowed when you're married or in a registered partnership with a Dutch person. I would like to vote for a party that will change this law, but of course I can't. (It's a catch-22.) 

It seems to be a good thing that housing corporations are not as powerful in Carnisse as elsewhere in Rotterdam, and that there are many private owners, because they cannot easily tear down houses here like in the Tweebosbuurt. Is this correct? Next time I will be in Koffie & Ambacht, I would like to learn more about how Carnisse is doing.

Florian Cramer