Campaign launched calling on people to email NSC leader in support of young Armenian boy

A campaign has been launched to encourage people to email Pieter Omtzigt and his NSC party to try to prevent the deportation of 11-year-old Mikael to Armenia. The movement was initiated by the campaign organization DeGoedeZaak, which calls on people to email and "have an eye for the human dimension."

The 11-year-old Mikael was born in the Netherlands. In July, the Senate informed him and his mother that they were being deported to Armenia after their requests for a residence permit were denied. Several campaigns are ongoing to keep them both in the Netherlands. A petition initiated by DeGoedeZaak has been signed over 88,000 times.

"The case of Mikael and his mother is symbolic of how the government treats children rooted in the Netherlands. The interests of the citizens should be central to the constitutional state that Pieter Omtzigt advocated for during election time, and we should apply a human dimension to that. This was also his promise during the start of the Cabinet. That is why we are calling on him to plead for a residence permit for Mikael and his mother," said Jurgen van den Bergh, director of DeGoedeZaak.

This week, the faction leaders of all the left-wing opposition in the lower house of the Dutch parliament, the Tweede Kamer, called on asylum minister Marjolein Faber to abort plans to deport Mikael. They did this with a letter in the Volkskrant. They wrote that no law prohibits the Cabinet from keeping Mikael in the Netherlands.