The costs and benefits of immigration into the Netherlands will be investigated after all.

The government turned down a request for a similar calculation from Geert Wilders' Freedom Party, but the Amsterdam-based multicultural institute Forum has now commissioned academic research into the question.

Forum's director Sadik Harchaoui told Trouw daily that he does not want to stray into a political minefield, but just get the facts out in the open. That would keep the discussion unbiased and "prevent navel-gazing and strained debates" in the lower house, Mr Harchaoui said. Forum has asked economist Peter Nijkamp at the Free University in Amsterdam to collect and present the data. Professor Nijkamp was involved in scores of immigration impact studies around the world, and told Trouw he is amazed that facts and figures about immigration are considered a taboo in the Netherlands.

The Freedom Party attempt in parliament to have "the costs of immigrants" summarised failed when Integration Minister Eberhard van der Laan refused to answer Geert Wilders' questions on the subject. "We don't calculate the cost of people," Mr Van der Laan said. Mr Wilders' party is anti-Islam and thinks that the influx of Islamic immigrants is harming Dutch society. Unlike the Freedom Party, Forum also wants to have the benefits of immigration looked into.

Geert Wilders (Photo: ANP), Sadik Harchaoui (Photo: Forum.nl)