Around the summer it will be exciting again at the application center for asylum seekers in Ter Apel, says State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum). To prevent asylum seekers from having to sleep in the grass there, just like last year, other municipalities will be called upon in the event of a (too) high influx of asylum seekers.
“I told the Board that if things go wrong again, the reception will not be arranged again in Ter Apel,” Van der Burg said today in an explanation of the prognosis of the number of asylum seekers.
The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) does not need 75,500, but 77,100 reception places before the end of this year by 2024. In 2025, this will rise even further ‘significantly’, the cabinet expects.
“Then we will have to do it somewhere else in the Netherlands. If we fail to arrange enough places together, there is an emphatic risk that people in the Netherlands will end up living on the street. We must try to prevent that”, emphasizes Van der Burg.
However, the State Secretary does not yet have any instruments to force municipalities to take in (additional) asylum seekers. The distribution law in which this possibility is regulated is not yet in place. “My main instrument is my mouth and that hoarse voice of mine,” said Van der Burg. For months he has been trying to persuade municipalities to take in asylum seekers.
Now that the cabinet expects a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers and estimates that it will reach more than 70,000 by the end of this year, “not only I, but also all civil servants and the COA have to get to work”.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND), which is struggling with major backlogs, will come under even more pressure, expects Van der Burg. “We are going to take measures so that the IND can guide more people through the process.”
The IND can now process 22,000 asylum applications annually. “If 70,000 people come in, that’s a serious problem.”