Over half of Dutch pleased with government's asylum plans

Over half (57 percent) of Dutch voters are happy with the package of measures the government presented to reduce the number of people seeking asylum in the Netherlands. Among voters for the coalition parties, three-quarters are happy with the plans. But only 43 percent of Netherlands residents think the government will manage to actually implement the measures, RTL Nieuws reports after surveying 15,000 members of its news panel.

Last week the government came to a compromise on asylum. PVV leader Geert Wilders gave up on his cherished wish to declare an asylum crisis, and the coalition parties and Cabinet agreed on taking a series of far-reaching measures. These include scrapping the Asylum Distribution Law before the end of the year, no longer obliging municipalities to find housing for refugees, limiting refugee residency permits to three years, deporting convicted asylum seekers, declaring parts of Syria as “safe,” and building extra cells for rejected asylum seekers awaiting deportation.

According to RTL researcher Gijs Rademaker, voters appreciate the sharp course that the Cabinet is taking. Many of the measures get broad support, but there are concerns about their feasibility.

For example, 89 percent of voters support the plan to declare asylum seekers who are convicted of a crime as “undesirable” and deport them, but only 52 percent consider it legally feasible. And 61 percent think it’s a good idea to lock up asylum seekers who have exhausted all legal remedies as they await deportation, but only 35 percent think it will actually happen.

Coalition voters, in particular, support the government’s course. “That it is prepared to seek out the extreme limits of what is possible and allowed within the current legislation,” Rademaker said. “But at the same time, the VVD and NSC voters have serious doubts about the feasibility of some plans. BBB and PVV voters do not want to see those difficulties, or, from their perspective, they see through them. They think: we will change the system.”

Wilders’ having to abandon his asylum crisis caused a slight blow to his voters’ confidence in him. Early last month, 95 percent of PVV voters had confidence in their leader, now it’s 90 percent. “It is still high compared to other party leaders, but still a dent,” Rademaker said. “We have not seen such a low figure for Wilders since the election.”

Voters for the VVD, NSC, and BBB all believe that it is mainly the PVV that left its mark on the Cabinet policy in recent weeks. Many PVV voters feel differently, saying that the NSC held the reigns.

A recent survey by Hart van Nederland showed that many coalition voters regretted their votes. 73 percent of NSC voters now wish they had voted for someone else. The same is true for 52 percent of BBB voters, 48 percent of VVD voters, and 42 percent of PVV voters.