Dutch gov't expects even more people to apply for asylum next year: report

The Ministry of Justice and Security expects more than 50,000 people to seek asylum in the Netherlands next year - thousands more than this year, NRC reports based on internal documents from an asylum summit last month. The Ministry also expects more successful applications, as many asylum seekers will come from dangerous countries like Syria and Afghanistan. Basically, the Netherlands' struggling asylum system will face even more pressure next year.

Officials from the Ministry of Justice and Security, the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA), the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND), and the police came together at the climate summit last month to make this forecast, which forms the basis of financing for the organizations involved.

The COA currently accommodates 48,647 people. About two-thirds of them are in regular asylum shelters. The others live in emergency or crisis shelters, which often boils down to a stretcher in a sports hall.

According to the forecast, the COA will have to accommodate 52,000 people within two months and 63,000 within a year. That is the middle scenario. In the worst case, the COA will care for 77,000 people by the end of 2023.

That will be a massive task, given the current state of asylum shelters in the Netherlands. The problems are most visible at the registration center in Ter Apel. For weeks, hundreds of people had to sleep outside in makeshift tents because there was no room inside the center. And many people inside slept on chairs or on the floor.

While no one is currently sleeping outside, the problems behind the gates are still massive. Unaccompanied children, for example, have been sleeping on the floor of the application center’s waiting rooms for weeks because there are no beds for them. Over 300 kids are currently staying in the shelter for unaccompanied children, which is built to house 55, according to the newspaper. State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum) pleaded with municipalities to create space for these children. Only one municipality agreed to help.

Many municipalities are reluctant to house asylum seekers. Seven aren’t housing any asylum seekers or refugees at all, the Volkskrant recently found in its own research.

A court recently ruled that vulnerable groups, including pregnant women, babies, and unaccompanied children, can no longer be placed in emergency or crisis shelters. The court also ordered the State to start improving the state of shelters immediately and to immediately make sure all asylum seekers have access to basic needs - a bed, food and water, and sanitary facilities.

The documents from the asylum summit also show that the IND does not have the capacity to process more asylum applications. Budget cuts and staff shortages already mean that asylum seekers sometimes wait years before finding out whether they can stay in the Netherlands. The Ministry expects that these increasing problems will result in more asylum seekers going to court to demand quicker clarity or fight the rejection of their application after years of waiting. And that will lead to more pressure on the judicial chain.