So far this year, almost 40,000 asylum seekers have come to the Netherlands, according to currently secret documents that will be discussed in the Council of Ministers on Friday. Although there are fewer than expected, the influx this autumn is ‘still higher than in previous years’. The shelter is therefore overcrowded.
Last April, the government outlined a screenplay in which up to 70,000 asylum seekers were expected. That number will not be achieved, writes outgoing State Secretary Christophe van der Maat (Asylum, VVD) in a yet unpublished letter to Parliament. So far, 39,600 people have applied for asylum in our country. According to the revised forecast, the number will be approximately 52,000 asylum seekers this year.
Yet the asylum shelter is overcrowded. Of the approximately 60,000 shelter places in the Netherlands, a quarter are occupied by status holders. These 16,000 asylum seekers already know that they can stay in the Netherlands. However, there is no home for them. The registration center in Ter Apel is still extremely busy, sometimes even busier than the maximum 2,000 people agreed with the municipality of Westerwolde, which includes the Groningen village. For weeks, asylum seekers have sometimes had to spend the night in the waiting area.
The government now expects almost 66,000 asylum seekers next year. Because the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) will decide on asylum applications more quickly next year – the waiting time is often too long – higher figures are expected for 2024.
‘Calls not yet delivered sufficiently’
The number of shelter places required as of January 1, 2024 is approximately 69,900 shelter places. Nearly 6,000 of these are intended for underage asylum seekers who come to the Netherlands alone. For 2025, the number of childcare places will be adjusted slightly downwards. While the COA shelter organization was asked this spring to prepare for 97,000 beds, 96,000 are now being discussed.
The reception of underage asylum seekers in particular remains a bottleneck. The State Secretary has called on municipalities several times to provide suitable shelter for this group. “These calls have not yielded sufficient results so far,” Van der Maat notes. He writes that work is being done on ’emergency measures’ that he ‘would rather not use, given the vulnerability of this group of children.’
The VVD minister, who was State Secretary of Defense, has replaced Eric van der Burg for almost two weeks. He had to call in sick after a serious case of food poisoning. “Things are getting better, but recovery takes time,” Van der Burg wrote on X at the end of October. The new asylum figures were supposed to go to the House of Representatives last month, but the illness and replacement of the State Secretary caused a delay.
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