“It is very nice that this long period of fear and uncertainty is coming to an end and that Mikael can focus on his future,” said Halsema. She says that the good news reached her through Mikael’s mother. “He can finally be a normal Dutch teenager.” The two lawyers confirm that Mikael and his mother are overjoyed and relieved to finally be able to move on with their lives. “They are grateful for support that so many people have given them.”
For a long time there was uncertainty surrounding the situation of Mikael and his mother. In July last year, the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State indicated in a ruling that the two were not allowed to stay in the Netherlands and had to leave for Armenia.
Stress and uncertainty
The Council of State emphasized in the ruling that Mikael and the mother left the shelter earlier and that the mother ended contact with the authorities. According to the Council of State, the fact that they had been in stress and uncertainty for eleven years was partly due to the mother’s choices and partly due to the various authorities that took a long time to make the decision.
“That does not mean that the Department can agree with the foreigner,” the Council of State wrote at the time. “The desire to stay in the Netherlands, the stress and the uncertainty do not quickly put aside the application of the Closure Regulation.”
Rejection
In 2010, Mikael’s mother came to the Netherlands from Armenia, where her asylum application was rejected. She decided to stay here and a few years later Mikael was born. The family applied to the minister to grant a residence permit on the basis of the ‘Closing Definitive Regulations for Long-term Resident Children’, but this was rejected. The judge subsequently ruled that the rejection was unjustified, after which the minister appealed. The case had already been before the Council of State for more than 2.5 years.
Mayor Halsema made an online appeal, in which she again appealed to the minister. “This is an example where a rule is far too harsh in an individual case. Mikael is an 11-year-old Amsterdammer and is one of his friends at school. The desire to have fewer migrants in the Netherlands can never be so strong that it comes at the expense of an 11-year-old boy who knows no other country than the Netherlands,” were Halsema’s words. In addition, the petition was against the boy’s deportation more than 8,000 times signed.
Last June, AT5 visited the then 11-year-old Mikael who talked about his situation: