The three hundred asylum seekers were on the street on Tuesday morning after the permit expired on Tuesday for the extra tents at the application center in Ter Apel. Even though Mayor Jaap Velema of the municipality of Westerwolde had announced well in advance that he would not renew the permit under any circumstances, there was no place to sleep for the three hundred asylum seekers on Tuesday.
State Secretary for Asylum Eric van der Burg (VVD) said earlier in the day that he could not even guarantee that those places would be there. Only because Nijmegen, Amsterdam and Oss showed their willingness at the last minute to temporarily receive extra asylum seekers in collaboration with the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) did they prevent people from having to sleep on the street.
Van der Burg showed understanding for Velema’s decision not to renew the permit: ‘He says: I have more than completed our task, and have done some extra. Now it’s the rest of the Netherlands’ turn.’ According to Van der Burg, the Netherlands still needs a ‘second, third, perhaps a fourth Ter Apel’.
relatives
According to Van der Burg, one explanation for the relatively high number of asylum seekers is the growth in the number of so-called relatives. In the past two years, few relatives of status holders traveled to the Netherlands due to the corona pandemic. In addition, too few status holders move on to a normal home, as a result of which they occupy places in the asylum seekers’ centres. There are no refugees from Ukraine among the three hundred asylum seekers, they are not accommodated through the regular asylum reception.
At the moment, the lack of places is ‘very visible’, the COA spokesperson said on Tuesday. ‘And when a shelter has been found for these three hundred people, new people will arrive tomorrow.’