A COA spokesperson shows the sleeping cabins in the new Amsterdam shelter.Image Joris van Gennip
The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) does not often experience this: a municipality outside the province of Groningen that picks up the phone itself and offers three hundred extra reception places in one fell swoop. Two weeks ago it was Breda, now Amsterdam.
Given the need in Ter Apel, the city feels obliged to assist, Amsterdam councilor Rutger Groot Wassink (GroenLinks, refugee shelter) said on Thursday. ‘I heard the State Secretary say yesterday that people should sleep in sports halls again. We just don’t think that’s possible.’ Outgoing State Secretary Eric van den Burg (VVD, asylum reception) warned about this scenario during a House of Representatives debate on Wednesday.
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Iva Venneman is a general reporter for De Volkskrant
It is not the first time that the city has come to the rescue. “I still remember that we were asked if we could increase our five hundred asylum seekers’ center places to seven hundred,” says Groot Wassink, councilor since 2018. The three hundred new beds are in addition to the more than seven thousand shelter places that the city now offers: 3,700 of which are for status holders and asylum seekers, 3,400 for displaced persons from Ukraine.
‘We can skip it once in a while, but that won’t help our colleagues in Ter Apel. But let there be no misunderstandings about this: I am grumpy about it,” says Groot Wassink. ‘The Spread Act should have come into effect on January 1, 2023. We have been discussing it for two years. So we very much hope that it will finally come in January.’ He calls on other municipalities to also raise their hands.
Four thousand new places
The call from outgoing State Secretary Van den Burg appeared to gnaw at more municipalities on Wednesday and Thursday. The outgoing State Secretary announced two weeks ago that he needs four thousand new emergency shelters before the end of the year. Because many status holders who are waiting for a home are occupying places in the asylum reception, he is also looking for 1,300 hotel beds for them.
Amersfoort is releasing 154 hotel beds for asylum seekers. In Assen, the Expo Hall, which has been used as an ‘overflow location’ for Ter Apel since July, will be kept open for three months longer. And in Berkel-Enschot, which falls under the municipality of Tilburg, 150 hotel beds for status holders have been found.
“Every time such a call comes, we discuss at a regional level what we can still do,” says a spokesperson for the municipality of Tilburg. Earlier this week, the neighboring municipality of Dongen already took care of the emergency shelter of 150 status holders. Tilburg now follows with 150 status holders, all of whom are already linked to the city or the surrounding villages. “This means we can quickly remove our own status holders from the asylum seekers’ center,” said the spokesperson.
‘Half of municipalities have no asylum reception facilities’
The municipality of Deventer also agreed on Wednesday to 48 new shelter places in a hotel, but on one condition. There has been a temporary reception boat in the city for a year for 168 asylum seekers, which will leave at the beginning of January. Deventer has now agreed with the COA that fifty of the boat residents will be given priority for the new hotel beds, or a place in the asylum seeker center in the neighboring village of Schalkhaar. The municipality did this at the request of city residents.
The COA is happy with this help, but a spokesperson also emphasizes: ‘All these shelters are temporary, so it remains a band-aid.’ In addition, he has seen in recent weeks what he has been seeing for two years. Help follows after a call from the State Secretary. But mainly from municipalities in the north of the country, or from municipalities that already offer asylum reception. ‘Half of the Dutch municipalities still have no asylum reception facilities at all.’
Young people traveling alone often end up in the Netherlands by chance
Unaccompanied minor refugees (AMVs) do not always consciously choose the Netherlands as their final destination. The fact that they end up here is usually due to chance. The final destination of these young people is often only chosen during the flight. This is evident from research by the Scientific Research and Data Center, which was published on Thursday.
The impression was that the Netherlands was often specifically chosen by parents or the child themselves, possibly in connection with the flexible rules regarding family reunification. That doesn’t seem right. Young people often do not see the Netherlands as their intended final destination upon departure, except for Syrians.
In addition, the choice of the Netherlands as a final destination, if it is made consciously during the flight, can have different motives. Safety, the positive image of the Netherlands as a tolerant country and social networks here are mentioned as examples by the researchers.
The Netherlands has been experiencing a sharp increase in the number of unaccompanied minors for two years now. This puts a lot of pressure on agencies such as Nidos and the IND. In 2022, 4,205 unaccompanied children arrived in our country.
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2023-12-21 18:09:58
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