On the day that the majority of the MPs agreed with the controversial asylum laws, the 140 volunteers of aid organization VEEL in the city celebrated the annual barbecue. “It was a very bitter day,” says Joost van den Bogert, pastor and manager.
At STEM in the city, a ecclesiastical organization in Haarlem, those 140 volunteers are committed daily to help undocumented people with legal questions, medical issues, postal addresses and shelter.
“This morning I sat on my bike to work. I looked around and thought: find people in our city actually that we are punishable?” Says Van den Bogert.
First along the Senate
On Thursday evening, the House of Representatives agreed to new asylum laws that, according to the PVV, have to present ‘the strictest asylum policy ever’. According to this law, people who stay in the Netherlands without papers can now get a half year in prison.
Providing help to people who stay in the Netherlands illegally would also be punishable with the new law. That means that churches, the Salvation Army, but also, for example, teachers who have a child without a residence permit in the classroom, risk a prison sentence of six months.
That law first has to go to the Council of State and then the Senate still has to agree. So it is not yet certain whether the law really will happen.
Wait for eighteen months
“It is a bizarre situation,” says Cor ofman, pastor and volunteer at Step further in Amsterdam-Zuidoost. Every Friday at that organization – a walk -in house that was founded in 2010 by six churches – is open.
Not only a cup of coffee or a listening ear is offered here. Ofman and his colleagues help people who have been rejected by the IND with a new attempt to perpetuate their lives in the Netherlands with that one proof.
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