An initiative group advocates smaller-scale reception of asylum seekers in the Netherlands and has devised the KAN plan: Small-scale Asylum Reception Netherlands. Director John van Tilborg of refugee organization INLIA is one of the initiators.
“If you now look at how people feel surprised by the designation of large-scale reception facilities with 300 to 600 places for asylum seekers,” says Van Tilborg in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata. “There is a lot of resistance, residents and administrators are struggling with it.”
The KAN plan advocates a different way of reception. “Each municipality has a target of how many asylum seekers they have to house each year. A small municipality has few people, a large municipality more people,” says Van Tilborg. KAN says, you have to stop wanting to set up all those big centers with all the resistance that entails, you have to do that on a small scale. KAN advocates thirty places for asylum seekers per ten thousand inhabitants.
A good example is the municipality of Tynaarlo, according to Van Tilborg. “There are different types of small-scale reception facilities spread across that municipality. Overflow from Ter Apel, reception for unaccompanied minor asylum seekers and reception for status holders. You can see that the carrying falcon is much larger there.”
“We had a small-scale intermediate facility for status holders in Eelde for four years and that worked perfectly. People did not have a home, but they were prepared there for their life in the Netherlands. It was a kind of buffer. Why not apply that more widely, not only for status holders, but also for asylum seekers. You do not need all that expensive security. In four years we have had police in Eelde three times. It is small-scale and we do it with the community.”
Asylum seekers can therefore start integrating into society, says Van Tilborg. “They don’t have to move twelve times, which now happens when they are in a large asylum seekers’ centre. We have now spoken to the State Secretary about this and we are in consultation.”