Dutch immigration service rejecting more and more asylum applications; Lawyers concerned

More and more asylum applications that used to be approved almost automatically are now being rejected due to a new working method at the Immigration and the Naturalization Service (IND), asylum lawyers, experts, and the refugee organization VluchtelingenWerk Nederland told Nieuwsuur. The new method will only result in extra work for the IND because many asylum applications will still be approved on appeal, they expect.

The adjustment to the working method, implemented on July 1, was devised by former Asylum State Secretary Erik van der Burg with the aim of rejecting more asylum applications. That seems to be having the intended effect, but experts involved think the IND is simply shifting granting the application to a later point, resulting in more work for the service and more uncertainty for the people involved.

The biggest change in the assessment of asylum applications is that people who do not have any documents with them are automatically regarded as suspicious. They must meet five credibility criteria for their application to be considered. These criteria already existed but were mainly used as a guideline in the past. Now they’re more of a checklist, Tanja van Veldhuizen, a forensic psychologist who obtained her Ph.D. from Maastricht University on the working methods of the IND, told the current affairs program.

“That may sound reasonable at first glance, but the reality is that many people who flee have to throw away their papers by order of people smugglers,” Veldhuizen said. The guidelines also state that if someone refuses to answer a question, that is a reason to consider their story as untrustworthy. “That may also seem reasonable, but I wonder what happens to people who, for example, cannot or do not want to talk about certain things due to shame or stigma. Many people have had bad experiences with the authorities in their own country and are, therefore, reluctant.”

Asylum lawyers and VlucthelingenWerk Nederland told Nieuwwsuur that people who were previously considered vulnerable as a group now have to individually demonstrate that they are at risk if they are sent back.

“The extraordinary thing is that it also happens with groups of which you can reasonably say that everyone in that group is at risk,” lawyer Bart Toemen said, referring to one of his clients - an Afghan woman whose asylum application was rejected - as an example. “Before July 1, it was said that the position of women in Afghanistan is terrible. There is also a ruing from the Court of Justice from the beginning of this year stating that Afghan women form a social group that must be admitted. I think this woman’s request would have been granted before July 1.”

Toemen expects that the new IND method will only lead to more well-founded appeals. “And if an appeal is upheld, the IND will have to do the work again.”

Lawyer Maartje Terpstra expects the same. She is representing an underage Somali girl who is facing forced marriage to the leader of the terrorist movement Al Shabaab in her home country. When she fled to the capital, Mogadishu, with the help of her cousin, her family’s house was shot at, and her cousin was abducted and murdered. She provided photos of the bullet holes in her family home and proof of her cousin’s murder to the IND, but it still rejected her application.

She also expects the new IND method will increase the workload for asylum lawyers, the courts, and the immigration service itself. “And with a lack of capacity, we are not excited about that,” Terpstra told Nieuwsuur.

Minister Marjolein Faber of Asylum and Immigration told the program that it was too soon to say whether the new system would lead to significantly more rejections. “Whether rejections are correct can, of course, be tested on appeal,” she said.