Dutch Americans
While the Netherlands was a small country, the Dutch Empire was quite large so emigrants leaving the mother country had a wide variety of choices. New Amsterdam was not high on their list, especially because of the Native American risk. The major Dutch cities were centers of high culture, but they still sent immigrants. Most new arrivals were farmers from remote villages who, on arrival, in America scattered into widely separated villages with little contact with one another. Even inside a settlement, different Dutch groups had minimal interaction. With very few new arrivals, the result was an increasingly traditional system cut off from the forces for change. The people maintained their popular culture, revolving around their language and their Calvinist religion. The Dutch brought along their own folklore, most famously "Sinterklaas" (the foundation of the modern day Santa Claus) and created their own as in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". They maintained their distinctive clothing, and food preferences and introduced some new foods to America, including beets, endive, spinach, parsley, and cookies.
List of Moroccan Dutch people
The following is a referenced list of notable Dutch people of Moroccan origin. Some of the people listed below are immigrants; others are of the second generation. Large-scale immigration to the Netherlands started on 14 May 1969, when the Netherlands and Morocco signed a treaty allowing recruitment of mostly unschooled labourers to work in Dutch mining, industry, construction and agriculture. Most guest workers intended to earn lots of money in a relatively short period and then return home. The fact that their number has risen to over 335,000 people, or over 2 percent of the Dutch population, proves many changed their minds. When the 1973 oil crisis hit the Netherlands, demand for labour greatly diminished and many guest workers lost their jobs.