The cabinet must work on a legal obligation for municipalities to receive ‘promising asylum seekers’ ‘in proportion to the number of inhabitants’. That’s in an advisory report published on Tuesday of the Council for Public Administration (ROB) and the Advisory Committee on Immigration Affairs (ACVZ), who point out that the proposed system already applies to beneficiaries. The advisory committees now advocate such a reception obligation for asylum seekers who are still in their procedure and who have a chance of obtaining a residence permit. The government is still responsible for this group.
Also read: Why do asylum seekers sleep on chairs in Ter Apel?
In the advisory report, the ROB and ACVZ state that an important condition for a legal obligation is that the central government makes sufficient money available for guidance and ‘promoting social cohesion’ in the municipalities. In addition, municipalities should be able to organize the reception as they see fit. The proposal should make the cabinet less dependent on the willingness of local administrators to receive asylum seekers in their region.
The registration point in Ter Apel in Groningen has been overcrowded for weeks, so asylum seekers regularly have to spend the night on chairs or even outside. The advisory committees make a critical assessment of the way in which the government has designed asylum policy in recent years: the current crisis itself is said to have been created and current policy is maintaining it. The ROB and ACVZ cite the cutbacks in institutions such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) and the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA), for which funding depends on the influx of asylum seekers.
Crisis in Ter Apel
The government has also been holding on to ‘voluntariness as the basis’ for cooperation with municipalities for too long. Instead, the councils recommend a legal obligation to facilitate reception centers for asylum seekers who are likely to stay in the country longer. The cabinet must remain responsible for the reception and guidance shortly after arrival in the Netherlands.
The national government – and not municipalities – should also ensure the reception of asylum seekers from safe countries who have little prospect of obtaining a permit. Due to the current crisis approach, the social and political support for asylum reception is crumbling, according to the advisory councils.
To prevent the crowds in Ter Apel, the IND must be able to decide more quickly about an asylum application. There has been no new space available in the application center for weeks, which can officially accommodate 275 people. New asylum seekers apply every day, while hardly any others leave, because they cannot go elsewhere.
The COA has been searching in vain for permanent reception locations for months. This is partly due to the fact that many municipalities refuse to offer them. On Monday evening, the Red Cross stepped in: the aid organization set up ten tents with room for forty asylum seekers on the site in Ter Apel.
Also read: Cabinet screens with crisis law for municipalities that do not want asylum seekers
Shortage of homes
The housing shortage in the Netherlands also plays a role in the reception crisis: due to a lack of housing, status holders stay too long in regular asylum seekers’ centers. 41,000 people reside there, of whom more than 14,500 have a residence permit. Because the throughput is coming to a standstill, there is no place for new asylum seekers who will therefore stay behind in Ter Apel for longer than usual. State Secretary Eric van den Burg (Asylum, VVD) has been insisting for some time that more municipalities should step in to relieve the Groningen city.
Municipalities have, however, set up a kind of rotation system, in which four regions accommodate six hundred asylum seekers for two weeks. This is done in emergency emergency shelters, such as hotels, sports halls or empty buildings. In the longer term, the government wants to realize more large-scale emergency shelters, so that two thousand asylum seekers can go to one place. The locations have not yet been officially announced.
At the same time, the government also expects individual municipalities to do more. These will have to arrange a total of 3,750 reception places. To put an end to the non-committal character, Minister Dilan Yesilgöz (Justice and Security, VVD) and Van den Burg are working on emergency legislation. The previous cabinet also tried to force municipalities to receive asylum seekers, but later had to recognize that the legal basis for this was lacking.