Dutch Council for Refugees: tackling nuisance-causing asylum seekers goes too far

The Dutch Council for Refugees VluchtelingenWerk Nederland believes that the handling of nuisance-causing asylum seekers goes too far, as NRC reported on Saturday. "When it comes to asylum seekers, policy and implementation have long since reached the limits of what the law allows. When all alarm bells are ignored by police, prosecutors, and authorities, something is wrong. There is no such thing as the rule of law. But constitutional concerns seem to have been summarily dismissed here. That is alarming."

The NRC article claims that a confidant of Justice and Security Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz is putting pressure on officials to cooperate in the prosecution of complainants. According to the newspaper's research, the term "harassment" was deliberately kept vague so that as many asylum seekers as possible could be processed. Police chiefs refused to cooperate to risk ethnic profiling.

"The huge nuisance caused by a handful of asylum seekers undermines support for the reception of almost all other asylum seekers who have nothing to do with it and are unfairly targeted for it. It is reasonable to assume that the Minister and the Secretary of State also see and make this distinction. However, the NRC investigation shows a very different picture: a simplistic approach that no longer seems to make a distinction. And tramples on the rule of law," said the Dutch Council for Refugees.

The Association of Asylum Lawyers and Jurists in the Netherlands (VAJN) is also against tackling nuisance asylum seekers, said chairman Wil Eikelboom. "We are talking about a small minority that undermines support for the reception of asylum seekers and causes a lot of trouble for other asylum seekers on the side. However, these measures go far too far and we are shocked to read that the Minister is deliberately encouraging ethnic profiling and discrimination in law enforcement. Incidentally, this also has the effect of unfairly inflating the proportion of asylum seekers in the crime statistics," Eikelboom said.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice and Security disagrees that it has actively interfered with the working instructions of the public prosecutor's office to take faster and tougher action against relatively minor crimes committed by asylum seekers. According to the spokesperson, discrimination was never the aim.

However, the ministry admits that the private hiring of a security company did not comply with European regulations. This was chosen because there was "compelling urgency".