Asylum seekers center for 200 people is being built along the border of Heemskerk and Uitgeest. This has been announced by the municipalities. The center will be located at the roundabout opposite De Trompet business park, near the A9 exit. There was also an AZC located there in the past. “We already showed in Heemskerk that it can be done very well.”
The government wants to distribute asylum seekers over all municipalities in the Netherlands, instead of over a few large centers. As it stands now, Heemskerk must receive 149 people in 2024 and Uitgeest 51. So they will tackle this together.
And that went very well at the beginning of this century. “Certainly in that place, where there are no houses right next to it”, Dick Hornberg knows. He was then chairman of the Refugee Work IJmond. He lives in Heemskerk and is now the chairman of the local PvdA.
The somewhat older Heemskerk residents who walk through the village center in the evening for groceries often remember the old AZC. “It’s great that Heemskerk is now also committed to receiving asylum seekers. Why not? The need is great,” says a man who walks out of the supermarket with his wife. She nods in agreement. “Come on, those people.”
A young woman with a child in the hand is not necessarily against the shelter, but still sees some objections. “Who are they exactly? Those people are often not allowed to work and so on, I don’t want any mess to come here because they are bored.”
noisy
And so the past repeats itself, Hornberg sees. “The first residents’ meeting at the time was very noisy. People did not want the AZC to come to Heemskerk. Then there was a lot of consultation. At the second meeting, many of the people who objected earlier signed up as volunteers. It’s been good for five years gone and finally there was An protest march when the AZC left as agreed after five years.”
Hornberg draws the comparison with the asylum reception on the Silja Europa in Velsen-Noord, where he originally comes from: “The Velsen-Noorders who want the ship to leave again, want that because that’s the deal, not because things happen.”
According to the municipalities of Uitgeest and Heemskerk, talks with the land owner of the intended shelter have already started. There is another obstacle: the site is located in Special Provincial Landscape, which requires an exemption from the Province of North Holland. This means that the province is ‘extra careful with it’, in this case because of the openness of the country and the meadow birds that live there.