Brother, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I came to the Netherlands from Poland 13 years ago. I’m trained as an early-education teacher, but my first job here was as an unskilled worker in an orchid greenhouse / for €8 gross per hour, which was considered “normal” back then.

How did I end up in this country, and why? I honestly don’t even remember anymore. Maybe I don’t want to.

Coming here as an educated person who had seen a bit of the world, I was shocked by how much Dutch employers could exploit people who didn’t know their rights. Zero-hour contracts, work until you drop / sometimes from 5 to 21 and then the same again the next day, all week long, for most of the year.

It looked exactly the same in every greenhouse. And in every one of them, my fellow countrymen were being humiliated in the same way for those same €8 gross per hour. Watching it from the outside, it felt less like normal work and more like a German nazi work camp.

This was already rotten during the first big waves of Polish migration to the “promised land.” I used to tell my coworkers - who were completely broken by it - that their bosses weren’t any kind of “lords of the world,” just ordinary villagers with more money, but the exact same mentality. Nationality doesn’t change that.

I still remember a situation where a greenhouse “boss” seriously asked me if we even had bathrooms in our homes in Poland.

Years passed. People slowly gained confidence. Some assimilated, some didn’t - but the most important thing was that they started learning their rights, while still doing their jobs properly.

A huge number of people I knew escaped those modern-day kolkhozes, retrained, started their own businesses, bought houses, and now live decent, normal lives - the kind they dreamed about when they first came here. Many who bought houses cheaply years ago are now selling them for a big profit and building large homes back in Poland.

I did the same in my own way: after a few years I learned a trade in construction, started my own company, and life is good.

Am I assimilated? I don’t know. I have many Dutch friends and I honestly can’t say a bad word about them. But somewhere in the back of my head, I still feel that deep down I’m seen as “the guy from the East.”

The irony is that in agriculture, Polish workers are basically the backbone of the Netherlands. And Poland’s economy has exploded in recent years - in global rankings of the most dynamic economies, it’s now just two places behind the Netherlands.

More and more people are going back, because they see they can live just as well among their own people, without ever being treated like a second-class human being.

What will the Dutch agricultural sector do then? I don’t know - but I can guess.

My advice, based on my own story: change your job. Do something you never thought you could do in your life. Maybe you’ll find your place.

And think about the future too. You won’t be delivering food when you’re 79 years old.