Spring has arrived. As more and more people leave their homes to enjoy the outdoors, rising mercury means Iraqi Majid Dalime, 41, has to return to living on the streets. With a bit of luck he will soon find a porch where he can sleep somewhat sheltered. Dalime no longer has a residence permit, but does not want to return to his mother country. “I haven’t been there for sixteen years, I don’t have anyone there anymore.”
For many years now, the national government has done nothing for undocumented foreign nationals who are unwilling or unable to cooperate in their return. They are therefore sentenced to a life on the street, at best they can turn to friends and acquaintances. Their most basic human rights are being violated as a result, say critical lawyers and social workers.
Not expandable
Dalime once had a residence permit. In 2007 he fled the violence of war in Iraq, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) ruled within a month that he was entitled to protection. He moved into his own home, learned the Dutch language at a fairly high level and found work. Five years later he lost his right of residence, because the Netherlands believed that Iraq was safe enough after the United States declared the end of the war in 2011. “They said I could go back to Iraq, they said Iraq was safe,” he says on a sunny but cold morning in March in the Wereldhuis in The Hague, a meeting place for undocumented people. The aliens police detained him in 2012 with a view to deportation, after more than three weeks of detention the judge ruled that he should be released. The prospect of expulsion was not realistic. That happened, but the IND persisted: Majid Dalime could whistle for new papers.
This is stated on the website of the Repatriation and Departure Service forced deportation to Iraq is only possible with a valid passport. Dalime no longer has that, his passport has expired. And because neither he nor the Iraqi embassy cooperates, he has been living a hard life on the street for years.
He shows a passport photo from eight years ago: his full face has turned into an unrecognizable decayed face and his teeth are in bad shape. Undocumented people are only eligible for treatments that are covered by the basic insurance for Dutch citizens. “The dentist just wants to pull out my tooth, but I want it repaired,” says Dalime, who is saving for treatment. For food he has to go to the Red Cross: there he receives a food card, with which he can spend 17.50 euros per week on food.
Last winter, Dalime contracted a serious foot infection. His entire leg was threatened with amputation, so the municipality of The Hague admitted him to the winter shelter out of leniency. It is actually not intended for people without valid residence documents. The winter shelter closed at the end of March, Dalime is back on the street.
Bed-bath-bread
The Netherlands has between 18,000 and 27,000 “unlawfully resident aliens”, research center WODC of the Ministry of Justice and Security reported at the end of 2020 his latest guess. Experts think there are many more, many people may have disappeared from the radar.
In 2015, a fierce political discussion raged about the reception of this group of people; coalition parties VVD and PvdA could not agree. The looming cabinet crisis was settled with an agreement stating that only the five largest cities and Ter Apel, where a departure center is also located, may offer bed, bath and bread. A year later it turned out, in response to a statement of the Council of State, that other municipalities may also conduct their own so-called bed-bath-bread policy. These municipalities do not receive national funding.
In 2019 it became the pilot National Immigration Facilities (LVV) launched: a collaboration between the national government and five large municipalities in which foreign nationals without legal residence may be received on the condition that ‘a permanent solution and prospects’ are sought at the same time. Such a solution can go three ways: departure from the Netherlands, transit to another country or legalization of residence.
Out evaluations has shown that the LVV ‘does not (yet)’ lead ‘to more departures’. The initiative is “not a panacea, it is not the solution that certain parties had hoped for in advance,” writes the WODC.
Cooperate with return
Despite the critical evaluation, the cabinet wants to expand the LVV “to a network with nationwide coverage where reception is always aimed at return”. The Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) is critical and calls the plan “not acceptable”, because it would ignore the “complex situation” in which people can find themselves. The VNG fears that people who cannot cooperate will end up on the street, with adverse consequences for ‘public order’ in the first place. The representative of the municipalities also warns that it can be disastrous for the “established collaborations” between the national government and local authorities.
“It is a fiction to think that working on return is always a possibility,” says social lawyer Pim Fischer, who is currently conducting several cases about national immigration facilities. He sees that in many cases people pretend to be people who can think carefully about a future outside the Netherlands. He acknowledges that in some cases, return may become possible once people are taken out of their survival mode. Fischer: “The Council of State says that you can set reasonable requirements, for example that they must report somewhere, but in practice there is little reasonable to discover.” Extremely vulnerable undocumented migrants, he says, only get their basic rights if they cooperate in their departure. He compares it to torture.
The requirement that people cooperate in their own return is “a degrading stick behind the door,” says Sylvana Simons. The Member of Parliament (BIJ1) has seen the LVV function closely as a former councilor in Amsterdam. After bed-bath-bread, she sees the LVV as “another plaster on a broken bone”, where “false promises” are made to please migration critics. Of the 2,065 people who participated in the LVV pilot, less than 10 percent have opted for voluntary departure. For more than 40 percent of the participants, their hopeless situation remained unchanged.
In the course of this year, the Ministry of Justice wants to hold talks with municipalities “about the intention to set up a national network”. Until then, the five LVV pilot municipalities can claim reception costs from the government.
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Exclusion of basic rights
Not every municipality arranges shelter for undocumented migrants, which means that people like Majid Dalime, who considers The Hague his home city, end up on the street. According to Janna Wessels, exclusion from social and economic rights is increasingly used as a way to push unwanted aliens across national borders. Migration policy is therefore at odds with human rights, says the assistant professor of migration law at the VU.
Providing basic unconditional help, says asylum lawyer Fischer, can mean “end of stress” for many. That could be a stepping stone to “a situation where people can think about their future again.” Voluntary departure would then ‘perhaps’ become a realistic option.
There is Lizebeth Melse, coordinator of the Wereldhuis (an initiative of the Protestant parish in The Hague) where Majid Dalime was spoken to wholeheartedly agree. It is a misconception, she says, that people who lack basic rights can make room for “thinking about their future, whose return could then be an option.” “We see very clearly that no one returns from the street to their homeland.”
In 2015, the Council of State ruled that the national government should cooperate with return as a condition for bed-bath-bread. The highest administrative court thus followed the explanation of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which had ruled that bed, bath and bread are already available in deportation centres. The reasoning was that the only thing standing in the way of refusing aliens is the person in question.
European human rights
It sounds like a final judgment if this European court states that the Netherlands is not acting in violation of the European human rights treaty. But according to lawyer Janna Wessels of VU University Amsterdam, this is not the only treaty that the Netherlands must adhere to. There is also the European Social Charter. A committee monitors compliance. “The charter is binding on member states, but decisions of the committee are not,” explains Wessels. “Still, the decisions are leading.” The latter is also recognized by the Council of State.
In recent years, the committee has considered a number of Dutch bed-bath-bread matters. It is clear from that jurisprudence that the charter does not allow that unwanted, uncooperative aliens are excluded from basic services such as a roof over their heads and some food. Wessels: “If the Netherlands does not provide basic services, then it violates the European Social Charter.” She argues that it is very important that administrative courts, including the Council of State, are guided by the charter, because it demands a ‘higher level of protection’.
Even if the Council of State were to come to a different conclusion, and if the national facilities for aliens were expanded, this would be of no use to Majid Dalime at the moment.
He has been homeless since April. His contact person at the Salvation Army in The Hague says that he sometimes visits the day care. “But he hasn’t found a new place to sleep yet. That is why he tries to get some sleep at the day care during the day.”