Good question: how would the Jewish grandfather of comedian and program maker Yora Rienstra, who fled from Germany to the Netherlands at the age of sixteen, have been received in 2023? In a villa, like the Ukrainian refugees Rienstra visits in Aldtsjerk in Friesland, or outside in an improvised emergency tent, like the Syrian brothers who now live between four plastic partitions in an event hall in Zuidbroek in Groningen?
In the second episode of Half of Holland in crisis (VPRO), in which Rienstra travels through the Netherlands to investigate the consequences of the climate crisis, the refugee crisis and the personnel crisis, Monday evening is about the refugee crisis in the Netherlands. The story of the Syrian brothers is difficult for Rienstra. Their mother has cancer, they hope they can help her. Small chance, says their lawyer; the boys are of age, then only a spouse is allowed to travel in connection with family reunification. Just think: in 2022, a total of 46,460 asylum seekers came to the Netherlands. Those are some life stories.
Also strong is how the program shows that it generates more money to receive Ukrainian refugees than it generates to receive asylum seekers. That’s the way it is, says investigative journalist Sonny Motké: the need for the reception of Ukrainians was considered so great that policymakers wanted to provide an incentive to solve that problem quickly. The reception of a Ukrainian refugee, who does not immediately have to apply for asylum in the Netherlands, therefore generates 80 euros per day, while for a Syrian refugee it is 60 euros. The unforeseen side effect: a mutual battle for reception locations.
Only one police car
Less strong is the ambition to expose the greatest crises of our time in three times forty minutes. With such huge subjects, nuance is lost, and that nuance had to pay off in the second episode especially on the part of the dissatisfied citizens. For example, in Albergen, Overijssel, where villagers took to the streets this summer after it was announced that three hundred asylum seekers would be moving into a hotel, Rienstra spoke with Hennie de Haan, spokeswoman for local residents – and until recently also for the poultry farmers’ union. . Rienstra wanted to know what the residents are so worried about. There will be ‘men traveling alone’, which makes the fathers of teenage daughters anxious, De Haan knows. And, she says, Albergen is a small rural community, there is only one police car.
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Clumsily formulated, but not incomprehensible concerns, the viewer who watched the fourth episode of last week knows Rutger and the Nationalists (PowNed) saw. In it, three residents of Ter Apel in Groningen expressed their concerns about the amount of burglaries, car break-ins and intimidation in their village. Ter Apel, which houses the application center for asylum seekers, is burdened by the nuisance caused by a group of about 150 asylum seekers with a small chance of obtaining a residence permit, also referred to as ‘safe citizens’. “And then we are not talking about war refugees,” says a resident Rutger and the Nationalists. Not about the terrible stories she also hears from the Syrian refugees in her supermarket.
Rienstra, who knows about the Groningen Zuidbroek that people “still post letters”, and the Frisian Aldtsjerk “the middle of nowhere”, chooses to discuss in more detail the, according to De Haan, ‘perilous’ road along which the new reception location in Albergen is located. “Soon you will have walked here from Syria for three months,” she says, “and then you will be broken down on such a silly country road in Albergen.”
I won’t elaborate here on the gap between city and countryside, but I think it starts with not really trying to understand the fear of Overijssel villagers. Whether it is real or not.
replaces Rinskje Koelewijn this week.