The government expects that the number of asylum seekers coming to the Netherlands this year will indeed be considerably higher than previously thought. About 70,000 people will probably sign up. We are looking at what can be done about the high number of requests that are approved.
The high asylum figures leaked to Nieuwsuur earlier this month and are now confirmed. State Secretary Eric van der Burg has sent the Multi-Year Production Prognose (MMP) to the House of Representatives, which states that at least 49,000 asylum seekers will come to the Netherlands this year, but that the number will probably be between 67,000 and 77,000 people.
It is most likely that around 70,000 new asylum seekers will arrive this year. That is about 17,500 more than was thought at the end of last year. And if nothing is done, the increase will continue in the coming years, says Van der Burg.
Need many more shelters
The high influx figures mean that the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers will need 77,100 reception places from 2024 and that the backlogs in the assessments at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) will increase by tens of thousands of files.
For municipalities, the high influx leads to the “highest target since 2015”. They will have to find housing for a record number of people whose asylum applications are approved: in the second half of this year, 27,300 people will have received a residence permit.
“We currently have 50,000 places, but many of them are emergency shelters,” says Van der Burg. The emergency shelter is for a certain time and then stops again. “With an expectation of 70,000 people in the coming year, you understand that I will not be bored in the near future.”
He acknowledges that a lot went wrong last year. “We will have to put a lot of effort into preventing that from happening again. We will have to face this. Otherwise, people in our towns and cities will lie on the street and we don’t want that for them or for our society. “
Van der Burg announces in his letter that he wants to do something about the number of asylum applications that are approved as soon as possible. That number has been increasing since 2020 and is now higher than in other European countries.
According to the cabinet, this is partly due to court rulings, as a result of which the IND increasingly has to demonstrate why a particular asylum seeker is not entitled to a residence permit.
This must change, says Van der Burg, because otherwise the Netherlands will become too attractive as a country of destination. He therefore wants to look less at entire groups of asylum seekers (and where they come from) and more at individual applications.
Cabinet wants to get a grip on migration
Behind the scenes, the government has been talking for a few months about ways to get a better grip on migration. This not only concerns asylum seekers, but also labor migrants and students. It is expected that something will come out about this in May.
Furthermore, Van der Burg has drawn up a so-called distribution law, with which municipalities can be forced, if necessary, to contribute to the reception of asylum seekers. This law has yet to be discussed by the House of Representatives and the Senate.
- Rutte about asylum influx: no guarantee that no one will have to sleep in the grass
- A large increase in the number of asylum seekers is expected in the coming years
