The Dutch government’s proposed new asylum and migration rules were criticized already before they were officially introduced after a leaked version reached the media late last week.
On Friday, Geert Wilders (PVV) announced what he called “the strictest asylum policy ever.”
“Together with the other coalition parties, we negotiated this for weeks and I am proud of the result,” he said.
The PVV’s contentious proposal for an asylum emergency law was abandoned in favor of stricter agreements on asylum procedures and migration regulations. Among the policies announced were:
- Reducing temporary residence permits from five to three years, with reevaluation after three years, and abolishing indefinite asylum permits
- Tightening family reunification permits: adult children and unmarried partners won’t be allowed to join an accepted asylum seeker later
- Facilitating easier deportation of “undesirable” immigrants convicted of crimes
- Repealing the “dispersal law”: No longer assigning municipalities a number of immigrants to provide housing for; instead, “austere reception facilities” will be set up as the only option for asylum seekers
- Scrapping priority for migrants in rental properties
- Deporting asylum seekers from ‘safe’ parts of Syria. Syrians (“the largest group of asylum seekers in the Netherlands”)
- Reducing the number of UN migrants from 500 to 200 per year
- Setting up 50 to 100 extra cells to detain and deport rejected asylum seekers.
- Introducing border controls with Belgium and Germany starting at the end of November, where illegal migrants, or migrants who have approved asylum status in another EU country, will be turned back in accordance with Article 25 of the Schengen border code, which states:
The reintroduction of internal border control might exceptionally be necessary in the case of a serious threat to public policy or to internal security at the level of the area without internal border control or at national level, in particular following terrorist incidents or threats, or because of threats posed by organised crime.
The measures came under immediate criticism from asylum lawyers, the Dutch Refugee Council, and others.
“The government wants to restrict the rights of recognized refugees, which puts them in a vacuum,” NGO Dutch Council for Refugees chairman Frank Candel told NOS. “You organize ghettos this way. At the moment refugees are linked to a city or village, if you let go of that then people are literally hanging in no man’s land.”
But Jaap Velema (D66), the mayor of Westerwolde, which encompasses the village of Ter Apel with a population of nearly 10,000, expressed his concerns about the current situation. The local asylum center, intended for 2,000 migrants, is overcrowded, and he believes that the proposed measures are unlikely to improve conditions for his municipality.
“We see that there is currently little inflow, but that there are problems with the outflow and throughput,” a spokesman for the mayor said.
In a demonstration on Sunday in The Hague, hundreds of Syrians protested the proposed measure to deport Syrians to parts of their country deemed safe. Signs at the demonstration said no part of Syria is safe as long as Assad is in power, and that they would return to the country once it is safe. It appears the new Dutch government is unlikely to take them at their word.
Prime Minister Dick Schoof said the outcome of the measures is hard to predict. “We’ll have to see what it does, you can’t express that in specific numbers. But this whole package will no doubt affect how many people will come to the Netherlands and the number that will leave,” he said.