Immediately upon arrival, distinguish between promising and less promising asylum applications. Place promising asylum seekers at municipalities and receive the rest in national asylum centers, under the responsibility of the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA). The Council for Public Administration (ROB) and the Advisory Committee for Immigration Affairs (ACVZ) advise this in a report. presented on Tuesday to State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum and Migration, VVD).
By making municipalities directly responsible for the reception of promising asylum seekers, the bulk of the total, and also making money available for this, the permanent crisis atmosphere in the refugee reception can be curbed, the advice says. According to ROB chairman Han Polman, such an intervention is necessary to maintain social support for the refugee policy and to prevent COA from stumbling from one refugee crisis to another. “How often do we still have to run into crisis situations such as in Ter Apel?”
Refugees are now received in centers of the COA until it is clear whether they qualify for a residence status. No distinction is made between refugees who have a reasonable chance of obtaining official residence papers and refugees from ‘safe’ countries, such as Morocco, with little chance. That is why those centers, with about forty thousand places, are overflowing and municipalities hardly feel responsible.
Municipalities should play a central role, just like in the reception of Ukrainians. “But then they must be given their own policy space and sufficient financial resources. In addition, selection has to be made much faster on the question of who is promising and who is not,” says Polman. „The IND can do that [Immigratie en Naturalisatiedienst]† He has sufficient expertise and knowledge to make that selection. It just needs to be organized faster than is currently the case.”
Also read this article: Why do asylum seekers sleep on chairs in Ter Apel?
‘Strict and fair policy’
A distribution key must then be drawn up to distribute promising refugees among all municipalities. “In proportion to the size of a municipality,” says Polman. “That is now also regulated in the national distribution of status holders among municipalities. There will always be smaller municipalities with hardly any space, but then it must be made possible for those municipalities to make agreements about this in a regional context.”
The advisory committees are critical of the asylum policy of recent years, which has led to the current crisis: overcrowded reception centers, hardly any care for underage refugees and crisis situations in which refugees had to camp on chairs in Ter Apel. The ROB and ACVZ cite the cutbacks in agencies such as the COA and the IND as the cause. As soon as the numbers of refugees decreased, cuts were made and as soon as the numbers increased again, an ad hoc response had to be given. Municipalities are not involved in panic football.
“Municipalities mainly want clarity and we now offer that with these recommendations,” says Polman. “That also makes a strict and fair refugee policy possible with support that does not crumble further.”
The cabinet has been looking for ways to force municipalities to accept asylum seekers or to make locations for reception centers available, if necessary with emergency legislation. According to Polman, a change in the law is also needed to regulate the reception of promising asylum seekers at the municipal level.
Also read this article: There is no quick solution to the asylum crisis