It can be hard to be a columnist. Week after week, you have to produce a single 400 word piece about whatever odd things you’ve been musing on. New ideas can be hard, so if you run short on creativity – and you’re writing for a Dutch newspaper – you can always turn to expat bashing.

In contrast to our Dutch counterparts, this will start out with some facts. Formally, expat, shortened from expatriate, is a person who lives outside of their native country. Colloquially, it has a much more specific definition: a rich white person who lives outside of their country.

People fleeing war and poverty don’t get called expats (despite technically meeting the definition of the word). They get called migrants or immigrants.

Historically, expats were rich office workers sent to other countries on temporary contracts. You’ve got your Shell-pats (those employed by oil giant Shell), for example. You and your family get posted abroad for a few years, your kids go to an international school, you live apart from the local population, you do not integrate as you have no plans to stay.

The world, however, has changed. Fancy expat contracts have all but disappeared. Remote workers do their jobs from anywhere. Open borders of the EU encourage movement.

But these stereotypes persist. If you come to the Netherlands as a white Brit, you’re an expat. If you come as a brown Syrian, you’re a migrant (or worse).

The Parool wouldn’t run a headline: ‘Krijg de tyfus, kutwijf,’ zei ik tegen de Syrische immigrant  bij het stoplicht’ but swap it out for “Amerikaanse expat” and you’ve got the latest in a long series of Dutch writers raging at foreigners.

The Parool seems to have the most of these anti-expat missives, unsurprisingly since the paper’s primary focus is on Amsterdam. A search on their site for “expat” returns dozens of articles, the bulk of which are negative opinion pieces or (most subtly negative) stories about the price of housing.

They can be found everywhere, however. Trouw wants expats to integrate, as does the NRC. No one ever really defines what integration means in these stories. Speaking Dutch? Eating stamppot? Using disease-based abuse? Complaining about expats?

Perhaps integration is wishing contagious diseases on people who are annoying you at traffic lights, as the latest Parool writer does. The annoying cyclist in question, who is identified as American purely based on stereotypes, wants to turn right on red. Our hero columnist informs her expat nemesis that isn’t legal.

(She’s correct, though if the Cyclists Union had their way, it would be.)

The American cyclist is described, derogatorily, as being dressed “if she were about to climb Mount Everest: helmet, backpack with water bottles on either side, jacket covered in reflectors.”

Perhaps the Parool should send their columnists out to the dunes on a nice day, where one can find Henk and Ingrid, wearing their matching ANWB kleding and with their fietstassen filled with broodjes and thermos of tea.

According to the AD, expats aren’t just ruining the cycle lanes, they are ruining the housing market.

They are doing this, according to the AD’s own numbers, by accounting for 1.6% of housing sales in the country with a budget that is €16,000 larger. Impressive work.

You’d think the Dutch, unburdened by helmets and water bottles, would simply cycle faster to viewings and purchase the houses before the beleaguered expats could arrive.

After destroying the country’s infrastructure, the average expat settles in and simply refuses to learn the language, if the columnists are to be believed. There are constantly columns from Dutch folks who go to cafes and are forced to order in English. Look, if you want Dutch spoken at the cafe so badly, grab a tray and start taking orders.

Never mind that the columns the Parool runs from so-called expats are just foreigners begging Dutch people to speak Dutch with them.

The Dutch who move abroad, meanwhile, don’t seem to do much better with integrating. In an AD story interviewing Dutch expats, they describe sending their kids to Dutch schools and being unable to talk to their neighbours.

A Dutch woman living in South Korea complains to the Telegraaf that her neighbours don’t speak English. No indication she’s bothered to learn Korean.

While Americans can certainly be annoying, if an American expat is behaving like an entitled buffoon in a cycle lane in Amsterdam, you shouldn’t be swearing at them.

You should be congratulating them for integrating.