You have legacies of which you say: I would rather reject them. But the ‘asylum legacy’ of the Schoof cabinet is one that the new coalition must accept.
And so D66, VVD and CDA inherited a completely stagnant reception system at the start of their government. For example, the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) has long had an occupancy rate of 100 percent. And although fewer people applied for asylum last year, the waiting time at the IND immigration service has risen to a record high. On average, it now takes two years before an asylum seeker is allowed to attend the second hearing, the substantive interview about the reasons for fleeing. And because it is always decided too late whether an applicant will be granted asylum, the service loses tens of millions of euros in fines every year.
In the coalition agreement, the three parties promise to put the “asylum chain in order”. However, the question remains whether the plans are sufficient to get the system running again. The reception problems are mainly caused by people staying in asylum centers for too long. This is due to the long IND waiting times, but also because asylum seekers no longer leave the country once they have received a residence permit. In principle, these ‘status holders’ should be housed by municipalities, but because they hardly have any houses available, they remain in reception centres. Status holders now make up almost a third of all COA residents.
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While the previous government imposed additional obstacles to housing status holders – by prohibiting municipalities from giving them priority for social housing – the new coalition is reversing this ban. The COA also receives more stable financing, allowing it to secure asylum seekers’ centers locations for the long term. And the dispersal law will remain in place for the time being, so that municipalities remain obliged to make asylum seekers’ centers possible. All this will have a positive effect on reception capacity, says COA.
In addition, the Refugee Work Foundation with its nine thousand volunteers may again help in the asylum seekers’ centers in order to relieve the COA. The previous government had largely canceled that aid.
Long IND waiting times
This gives the COA more breathing space – but this does not yet solve the problems in the asylum chain. The coalition wants to tackle the long IND waiting times with a series of measures to simplify the asylum procedure. “That will help us enormously,” said IND director Rhodia Maas in her response to the coalition agreement. However, these measures were already included in the Emergency Asylum Measures Act of the previous cabinet, which is awaiting approval in the Senate.
The question is whether waiting times can actually decrease, or whether they will increase further
Moreover, it is not expected that this law will have much impact on waiting times. The IND will be assigned many new tasks this year. Just for the introduction of the new ‘two-status system’ – another legacy of the Schoof cabinet – the service would need hundreds of new employees, implementation tests show.
And then the European Migration Pact will come into effect this summer, which means that the IND will have to adopt a new working method. Many additional legal procedures are expected, among other things.
In this way, the new tasks are piling up for a service that is already struggling with large backlogs. It raises the question whether waiting times can actually decrease in the coming years, or whether they will increase further. This means that the asylum legacy of the Schoof cabinet is far from over.
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