My fellow Americans,

I regret to inform you my brief life as a Dutchman is over.

I received no euthanasia, nor any semi-legal marijuana to ease the pain, only a letter from the Immigration Service, or IND, revoking my citizenship and ordering me to hand over the passport that took seven years and countless miles of red tape to obtain.

The reason: I wouldn't renounce my U.S. nationality. More on that later.

My Dutch wife was furious with her own government. "You've been here nearly 10 years, you work hard, you've integrated well, and this is the thanks you get?"

"Oh, go eat some cheese," I told her. And I meant it to sting.

When I came in 1998, Amsterdam felt like what Paris was supposedly like in the 1920s -- a freewheeling, tolerant place. Now there's an anti-immigrant backlash on, mostly against Turks and Moroccans. Anti-Americanism is also on the rise, but usually that just makes for lively dinner conversation.

The government has been doing everything it can to discourage immigration, despite a graying population on the edge of decline. It's working: arrivals are down more than 50 percent since I got here in 1998. In fact, more people are leaving than coming.

The buzz word now is "integration" -- in other words, forcing barbarians like me who are already here to assimilate. And so it was that in 2004, despite speaking fluent Dutch and riding my bicycle as recklessly as any native, I found myself taking the country's "inbugeringtoets," a citizenship test meant to measure whether I was capable of living here on a long-term basis.

I think I was the only non-Muslim in the room, including the instructor, who spoke broken Dutch with a heavy Turkish accent. Many of the questions were insulting or left me wondering whether a "native" Dutch person would know the answer.

For example: "You're on welfare. Your kids want to play sports during summer vacation. Where do you go sign them up? Answer: A) A gym. B) The city recreation department. C) Their school. D) The "GVD" -- some quasi-governmental agency I had never heard of.

Or: "The electricity in your subsidized housing goes out. Whom do you call? A) The electric company. B) The housing corporation. C) The GVD. D) An electrician.

I still have no idea which answers were right, but as an American I was weaned on multiple choice tests, and I got a passing score.

___

ENTER THE DRACO

Since my arrival, visa fees have skyrocketed from under $50 to over $500, another move intended to stick it to immigrants.

It is hard to imagine how someone without a skilled, full-time job could ever make it. Of course, many don't. It's worse for refugees, who are kept locked up while their asylum requests are processed, with prejudice toward deportation.

Anyhow, after passing the test, I decided to apply for a passport and be free of the annual costs and mountain of paperwork forever. To be eligible for citizenship I had to prove I had lived here five years "without a break," as the IND aptly put it.

I was docked two years' residence time right off the bat because I had filed my annual visa renewal papers two weeks late in 2000. Strangely, I distinctly remember being here, working and paying taxes on those days in January, even though they were categorized as a "break."

In February 2005 I was ready to try again, and then I learned that the Dutch government 'discourages' dual nationality.

I say "discourages," not "bars" because there are exceptions. For instance, two members of the Cabinet have dual nationalities: one is Turkish-Dutch and the other is Moroccan-Dutch. This enrages Dutch nationalists, who argue they have a conflict of interest.

I understand this idea in theory, but in practice, what exactly are they worried might go wrong? In the U.S., nobody thinks the governor of California, who also holds two passports, might try to annex the Sierra Nevadas to the Austrian Alps.

But the nationalists have one point. To quote a favorite Dutch saying, "rules are rules," and they should apply equally to everyone. Allow dual nationalities for all, or not at all. Allowing exceptions is the American attitude: "rules are made to be broken."

___

BUT I WON'T DO THAT

I told the IND I was willing in principle to give up my American passport -- knowing that, if you read the fine print, the U.S. views any vow you make to a foreign government as a formality. Uncle Sam will take you back, though he gently asks that you file your tax returns while you're away.

Once my passport was granted, the IND -- nothing if not sticklers for detail -- demanded I swear an oath at the U.S. Consulate, formally renouncing my citizenship, and get a piece of paper proving it.

Well, that's another matter, and I refused.

I want to be able to get back to the U.S., and take my family with me, in a worst-case scenario. Say, if global warming causes the seas to rise and the dikes start breaking.

Or if the Kafkaesque bureaucracy here continues to worsen.

I tried to weasel out of turning in my passport by arguing that I qualified for another major exemption, one granted to foreign spouses. But as an IND bureaucrat explained to me, I didn't ask for that exemption when I applied, so now I'm not eligible.

And, he told me, if I had applied that way in the first place -- as my wife's husband instead of on my own merits -- she would have had to prove she's financially supporting me and our young son. The reality is vice versa.

That's some catch, that Catch-22.

After stripping my Dutch citizenship, the IND sent me a form to apply for a new visa and instructed me to turn it in at city hall. The guy behind the counter at Amsterdam city hall wouldn't even look at it, telling me, "no, you can't turn that in here."

I held up the official IND envelope, pointing to the block letters that said "TURN IN AT CITY HALL."

"Don't speak to me," he said. "You have to talk to the IND."

___

asap contributor Toby Sterling is an AP reporter based in Amsterdam. He has been granted a temporary visa that expires in June.

___

Want to comment? Sound off at soundoffasap@ap.org .

©2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.