Perhaps our State Secretary for Asylum and Migration should publish a map showing municipalities that receive too few asylum seekers. Tubbergen, we know, is blood red. But who else are down, and can expect the phone call with which the Empire deprives them of their power?
The nitrogen debacle has apparently taught us not to give up those locations all at once. Dose the social unrest by always revealing a new bingo ball. “And the winner is… Bant… Tubbingen… Benoordenhout in The Hague!” Yes, years ago there was already talk of an asylum seekers’ center here, just around the corner from Rutte and Kaag. The Julian barracks is empty, I read here and there scornfully.
None of that. Beyond the barriers (‘forbidden for unauthorized persons’) you imagine yourself on such an estate whose castle has been converted into a hotel. Teslas and a red Porsche Taycan at charging stations. Rows of sprinklers sprinkle the only lawn in the Netherlands that has not withered. The diabolical trade-off between an asylum seekers’ center and tree estate turned out to be to the detriment of the asylum seeker.
It’s called Julia’s Park: a residential complex with palatial mansions, top apartments and ‘high-end penthouses’: “You live here in an oasis of peace on your own estate”the broker said.
Place the asylum card next to the nitrogen card and the naked eye barely sees any difference. Our countryside can pay for the negligence of the past cabinets. In retrospect, we should have made a better plan about what exactly we want with the asylum flow – how much and where? But who could have ever imagined that the misery in the world around us would increase, and that our prosperous, safe country would be so in demand?
Outside the Randstad, where the need for high-end penthouses is slightly less urgent, they are now getting the bill. all at once. Anyone who protests is considered a rude farmer, wappie and racist for the rest of the Netherlands.
Within the European Union, countries accept asylum seekers in proportion to their population size. Is it too much to ask to apply that principle in the Netherlands as well, and not to cram 300 asylum seekers into a village of 3,000 inhabitants? Benoordenhout has 15,000. One Juliana barracks is not enough for 1,500 asylum seekers.
Recently, Rutte apologized for the communication via the infamous nitrogen card. Clumsy, in hindsight. Well. In retrospect, Rutte I, II and III should have done something about the manure problem and asylum capacity. Now only ad hoc repairs remain, in which the poldering has been exchanged for an uncompromising policy of fait accomplis.
In retrospect, this Julian barracks would have been better off becoming an asylum seekers’ center than this protected residential estate for the very rich. But as they say in Twente: afterwards it is nice to live.
Christian Weijts writes a column here every Friday.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 19, 2022