CDA wants restrictions on labor and asylum migration

The CDA wants to limit both labor and asylum migration, CDA party leader Henri Bontenbal said on Saturday at a lecture in Amersfoort. "The Netherlands cannot bear the current migration," he said. As for labor migration, Bontenbal believes there should be clarity about the kind of economy the Netherlands is aiming for in the future "and for which we need labor migration," the CDA leader said.

"Migration disrupts societies. From the migration of young people to other countries to the accumulation of problems in vulnerable neighborhoods, to pressure on the housing market and public services," Bontenbal argued. In 2022, Bontenbal said, more than 227,000 migrants would arrive in the Netherlands. "We cannot cope with these numbers. Our current asylum and migration policy is not equipped for the future.”

However, the figure Bontenbal cites is rather low. The Cabinet reported earlier this month in a report with figures on migration that 403,000 migrants arrived in the Netherlands last year. That included more than 108,000 people fleeing Russian violence in Ukraine.

The CDA leader sneered at both the left and the right. "The left looks the other way. The right is pretending we can just close the borders. That's not going to get us out of trouble," he said in the first of three readings ahead of the parliamentary elections on November 22.

The Christian Democrats want to "detoxify" the debate and curb both labor and asylum migration, "but with the honest perspective that this will take years." Moreover, this containment can only be achieved in a European context, his party believes. "Pretending that there are easy solutions feeds cynicism in society," the CDA leader said.

"Sensible migration is a choice," Bontenbal stressed. "A choice for the people who rightly ask for our protection. But also a choice for the people we really need in our labor market." Choosing a high-quality economy, he said, "means we have nothing with distribution centers along the highway, where only cheap migrant workers ship packages at far too low wages without adding any value."

NSC and BBB also want to severely limit the number of migrants, among other things. NSC wants a migration quota of 50,000 annually. The BBB wants to accept a maximum of 15,000 asylum seekers per year. Last year, 48,000 people applied for asylum in the Netherlands, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND).