Concerns about asylum budget cuts as immigration service's waiting lists grow

Parliamentarians are confused and concerned by Minister Marjolein Faber’s (Asylum and Migration) plans to significantly cut the budgets of immigration service and asylum agency while the waiting lists at both institutions continue to grow. The Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the Dutch parliament, will debate the Ministry of Asylum and Migration’s budget on Tuesday.

It currently takes an average of 61 weeks for an asylum seeker to find out whether they can stay in the Netherlands. Last year it was just under a year, NOS reports. The pile of waiting asylum applications at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) currently stands at 69,000 and is projected to grow to 91,000 next year and 130,000 in 2030.

At the same time, Faber plans to cut the budgets of the IND and the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) by around 85 percent in 2028, and reduce their staff members by around 80 percent, Vrij Nederland reported on Monday based on an analysis of the Ministry’s budget.

The expenditures Faber budgeted for is at approximately at the current level for the next two years. For example, the Ministry will get approximately 9.8 billion euros in 2026. But in 2027, the budget suddenly drops to 2.9 billion euros, with no clear explanation of how the Ministry expects to cover all asylum reception and immigration affairs with that amount. Even if the influx of asylum seekers decreases as significantly as Faber hopes, the IND has a massive backlog to get through and the Netherlands also gets other types of immigrants.

CDA leader Henri Bontenbal thinks it is “not a credible story” and “not a proper budget.” It would be more humane and actually yield money if the IND had enough staff to quickly make decisions on the status of asylum seekers, he told NOS.

Coalition party NSC also has critical questions. “We should not have a repeat of the past years in which the IND was systematically under-budgeted. That creates a yo-yo effect,” said MP Diederik Boomsma. Previous tight budgets created the backlog that the IND is still struggling to get rid of, according to the MP.

Some MPs think that Faber wants asylum applications to take longer and longer so that fewer people fleeing war and persecution seek safety in the Netherlands. “To put it mildly, this is wishful thinking,” said GroenLinks-PvdA MP Kati Piri. “But in stronger terms, this is simply mismanagement to create even greater chaos.”

Faber said that she would check at the spring budget update whether the IND will need more money in 2027. The IND would not respond to the figures, but previously said that major cuts will have a “disastrous impact.”