Almost every day there is a report in the media about the overcrowded registration center for asylum seekers in Ter Apel. People sleeping outside on the grass, buses full of asylum seekers who sleep here, then there in a sports hall.
It seems like a migration of asylum seekers through the municipalities of Drenthe and Groningen in recent weeks. From Ter Apel to Stadskanaal, to Aa and Hunze, municipality of Groningen and Het Hogeland. To Borger-Odoorn, De Wolden, Noordenveld and Central Drenthe.
Asylum seekers could only spend a few nights in each of these municipalities. And so there is a lot of dragging back and forth. Late in the evening, buses full of asylum seekers stop, and then leave early in the morning, back to Ter Apel.
This mainly concerns men, because families, women, children and people with a medical indication or a so-called vulnerability indication are given priority in Ter Apel, and can therefore usually find a bed there.
According to Mayor Klaas Smid of Noordenveld, there is a logical explanation for the fact that Drenthe has recently provided emergency shelters more often. “People are only taken to emergency shelter late at night, then the distance must be bridgeable,” he explained on Radio Drenthe.
But how is it possible that there are so many more people than can fit in the registration center? That has to do with the flow. The asylum system is completely clogged and Ter Apel is the bottleneck where the problems only become clear.
Because apart from the influx of new asylum seekers, part of the problem lies further down the chain. Asylum seeker centers are full, often with refugees who have already received a residence permit and who therefore actually have to move on to a home.
But houses are scarce. That is why refugees with residence permits continue to live in the asylum seeker centers. This means that no place is available to accommodate the newly arrived stream of asylum seekers and they remain stuck in Ter Apel.
The COA had to pay a penalty to the municipality of Westerwolde every day that there were too many asylum seekers at the registration center. There was a maximum of five million euros. That maximum amount was reached in March of this year, but there are still too many people in Ter Apel. One consequence of this is that some asylum seekers have to sleep outside.
The Minister of Asylum and Migration has asked mayors if they would like to help with overnight accommodations. Several mayors in Drenthe and Groningen have responded to this call.
The mayors emphasize every time that this concerns temporary shelter. For example, Jan Zwiers, mayor of Midden-Drenthe, said: “We are not letting people sleep outside in this emergency situation and are therefore offering this temporary emergency shelter. At the same time, this is emphatically not a structural solution. It requires national efforts and choices.”
Mayor Inge Nieuwenhuizen of the municipality of De Wolden does not have a good word to say about the ministry’s approach: “We are helping, but this is not a solution to the underlying problem. It is a false solution as long as there is no structural solution to the overload in Ter Apel,” she said on Radio Drenthe.
Not all mayors are eager to tackle the overflow of Ter Apel with emergency shelter at night. Mayor Marcel Thijsen of Tynaarlo, for example, no longer sees any benefit in emergency crisis accommodation for asylum seekers. He calls on the government to stop the current system of emergency shelter.
In Noordenveld, where asylum seekers were sheltered in Roden for a number of nights, mayor Klaas Smid said: “The dispersal law must be implemented. The Netherlands, in addition to the North, must contribute to this.”
This means that the IND, the organization that assesses whether an asylum seeker can stay in the Netherlands, will work differently. They must process asylum applications within six months. Now that procedure often takes about two years.
It is still unclear whether the new rules will quickly lead to less crowds in Ter Apel. In theory, that is the intention. Migrants mainly have to go through the asylum procedure at the external borders of the European Union, for example in Greece or Italy. These countries must prevent asylum seekers from traveling through.
If that does happen, the Netherlands can send those asylum seekers back to the country where they entered the EU. That country is then responsible for the asylum procedure. Whether it will turn out this way in practice remains to be seen.