September 2, 2011, 12:54 pm

On Dutch Game Show, Competing for Cash Before Being Deported

By J. DAVID GOODMAN

It sounds like a cruel joke: a game show in the Netherlands that pits failed asylum seekers against one another in a test of their mastery of the country’s language, history and culture, with the prize being a little extra pocket money to take back home after the Dutch government shows all of them the door.

All the tropes of a traditional game show were here: the wild colors, the gregarious male host and his attractive female co-presenters.

It might seem something dreamed up by the anti-immigrant Dutch Freedom Party, lead by Geert Wilders. Indeed, the game show has attracted debate and consternation in the Netherlands for seeming to mock asylum seekers.

But in fact it was a kind of political satire, one aimed at challenging exactly the sort of harsh sentiment expressed by Mr. Wilders and others who see immigrants as diluting the country’s European culture. That the contestants, who would like to be allowed to stay in the Netherlands, present a very different image of would-be immigrants to the Netherlands seems to be the intent.

The show, which was shown on Thursday and likely to be a one-time event, included asylum seekers with children born in the Netherlands. It featured an aeronautical engineer from Cameroon and a Slavic languages student from Chechnya, the Voice of America reports.

As the BBC’s Anna Hollingan observes, the name of the show, “Weg van Nederland,â€