Two to three thousand people a year: that is how many asylum seekers it was in the end in the political clash between the VVD and the ChristenUnie that brought down the Rutte IV cabinet.
The crucial asylum measure on which the coalition parties could not agree had a minor effect – 1 to 2 percent – on the total migration numbers. This can be deduced from the official documents which the cabinet published on Monday at the request of the House of Representatives.
If the VVD had had its way, the cabinet would henceforth not admit following partners and children of refugees from war zones above a maximum of two hundred per month.
The documents shed more light on the migration discussion that gripped the coalition for weeks and led to the fall of the cabinet
Prime Minister and VVD leader Mark Rutte relaxed that quota slightly later in the week, to 250 family members per month – so three thousand per year. This demand turned out to be unpalatable for the Christian Union.
The political importance of the family reunification measure is in stark contrast to the size of this group. Last year the Dutch population grew by 227,000 inhabitants (without Ukrainians 140,000), almost exclusively through immigration. In 11,000 cases, this involved family members, of whom the family members of war refugees again make up half: 5,000 to 6,000 people, in the situation without quotas.
That is 2,000 to 3,000 more than would be possible under the VVD quota. The quota would therefore have led to a maximum of 2 percent fewer admitted immigrants.
Grip
The disclosed documents shed more light on the asylum and migration discussion that gripped the coalition in recent weeks and led to the fall of the cabinet on Friday. The documents, drawn up by civil servants, show that the government did have many instruments to manage migration flows, without being dependent on European or international rules.
This was of great importance to the four coalition parties. In recent months, they have all expressed their desire to “get a grip” on migration. They also did that on Monday, in the House of Representatives debate on the fall of the cabinet. With ‘grip’, these parties usually mean in concrete terms the reduction of the number of immigrants that the Netherlands admits each year, because of the pressure that the current numbers put on facilities such as housing and education.
Yet the documents show that in restricting immigration, the coalition focused mainly on asylum migration, a relatively small proportion of total immigration. For migrant workers, the largest group, different ideas were discussed that in some cases would actually lead to an increase in the number of immigrants.
This can be read, for example, in a proposal from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to recruit more practically skilled workers from outside the European Union. “Attracting technicians from other European countries to the Netherlands will […] become increasingly difficult, with the result that the shortage in the Netherlands continues to increase”, says a proposal from Minister Micky Adriaansens (VVD) to the ministers in Rutte IV who discussed migration policy in mid-May.
Dry
The Netherlands is already making it possible for employers to bring knowledge workers from abroad without too many obstacles. A special highly skilled migrant scheme has been set up for this: 22,000 highly skilled migrants made use of it in 2022
Also read this article: The migration debate: why the expat is more welcome than the asylum seeker
Adriaansens suggested investigating a similar scheme for filling practically skilled jobs at MBO level. She pointed in a note to the shortages that threaten to arise in ICT professions and technical jobs. Hundreds of thousands of vacancies will be added in the coming years.
Not everyone saw that. When the Ministry of Social Affairs shed light on a series of proposals in June, the criticism of the ‘skilled workers scheme’ was not tender. The ministry provides abrain drainfor countries of origin, expects Dutch labor to be less utilized and predicts that “pressure on facilities, such as housing, will increase”.
Dryly, the officials state: “Consequences for numbers of labor migrants: more labor migrants.”
booths
Still, the plan, at least as a reconnaissance, did not disappear from the table. Coalition sources confirm to NRC that the skilled workers proposal circulated until the last moment during the negotiations. Not everyone was equally enthusiastic: the VVD and also D66 were the main proponents. The ChristenUnie had little to do with it.
This division fits exactly with the substantive dividing line that has existed within the coalition since the beginning with regard to migration. The VVD wants to limit the influx of asylum seekers the most, but is not keen on slowing down labor migration. The opposite is true for the Christian Union. The CDA wants to tackle both forms of migration. Finally, D66 does not want to intervene much in either case.
In a matrix of migration positions, the four parties all occupy their own, different box. The differences between those boxes are large and, as it turned out last week, politically unbridgeable.
Also read this article: CU negotiator Van Ooijen: ‘When the decision was made, I also saw a kind of resignation in everyone’
With the cooperation of Wafa al Ali.