Should Reusel-Mierden, a Brabant municipality near the Belgian border with around thirteen thousand inhabitants, also have to build its own asylum seeker center? On maps showing municipalities that have received asylum seekers in recent years, the municipality, consisting of four village centers, turns red: no reception.
The space is there, says the spokesperson. Only: you don't just build an asylum seeker center. “It must be made habitable. The land must become the property of the municipality, the infrastructure must be put in order, water and energy must be supplied.” The municipality does not have large vacant offices, she says. “We are doing our very best. We do what we can.”
Be able to will soon no longer be enough: with the dispersal law, which is expected to be adopted by the Senate next week, municipalities must start receiving asylum seekers. This is not yet mandatory.
What will the much-discussed law look like in practice?
More asylum seekers
The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) currently receives more than 65,000 asylum seekers, most of whom have fled from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Turkey. (Ukrainian refugees are received by municipalities.) And according to asylum forecasts, sources confirm, more asylum seekers will have to be received in the coming years.
To open an asylum seeker center (azc), the COA needs permission from a municipality – and is often told 'no'.
Because municipalities are not eager to open an asylum seekers' center and then house hundreds of asylum seekers for years. Sometimes there are practical reasons, explains Paul Verbruggen, who advises municipalities in the north of North Holland about asylum seekers' centers and emergency shelters in that region. “An asylum seeker center competes for the same space as flexible housing, housing for migrant workers, the reception of Ukrainians and the construction of new houses.”
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Lack of support
But many municipalities also talk about the lack of political and social support. Or they say: we are already taking in hundreds of Ukrainians and housing asylum seekers who have residence papers, so-called status holders.
For example, there is already a hotel in Reusel-Mierden where asylum seekers spend the night before going to an asylum center. The municipality also accommodates Ukrainians and arranges social housing for status holders.
With the new law, which must come into effect on January 1, 2025, municipalities will also be allocated asylum seekers based on the number of inhabitants. This legal obligation should better distribute the reception of asylum seekers among the 342 municipalities, hopes outgoing State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum, VVD). Now there are municipalities that do not receive asylum seekers, while others have had an asylum center for years.
On Radio 1, Vluchtenlingenwerk chairman Frank Candel outlined on Wednesday morning what the dispersal law could look like in practice. He advocated small-scale reception and said that every neighborhood and every district “can have a small asylum seeker center, which in practice does not bother you.”
But to organize this, COA must significantly change its working method. For years, the organization has focused on large asylum seeker centers, where it can set up a 'complete team', with security, guidance, care and education. “Small locations, smaller than three hundred people, compromise on facilities,” says a COA official. And the costs per asylum seeker then “increase several times over.”
Due to the new law, COA will have to collaborate much more intensively with municipalities. Another COA official: “The COA monopoly will be broken up for the first time since its foundation.” The COA employees do not want their names in the newspaper.
'Exchange' of asylum assignments
The question remains to what extent municipalities that currently do not have asylum shelters will build their own in the future. After they have been told the number of asylum seekers to be accommodated, they first consult with each other about solutions – just as there are now regional consultations on the distribution of asylum seekers. There, municipalities can 'exchange' their asylum assignments against each other. In this way, smaller municipalities can accommodate complex target groups, such as underage asylum seekers who travel alone. Larger municipalities can then – in theory – open larger asylum seeker centers. Municipalities can even offer to take in Ukrainians from other municipalities in exchange for receiving 'their' asylum seekers. And only if municipalities cannot reach an agreement at the consultation tables, the State Secretary can force them to receive asylum seekers.
The COA expects that the dispersal law will only provide real relief in a year's time. But according to the officials involved, the law could in the short term ensure that municipalities where shelters would be closed in the coming months still decide to keep their centers open. And that locations that were already being built will be realized a little faster.
At the same time, the clear number of asylum seekers per municipality can also have the opposite effect, COA employees say. They fear that small municipalities with large asylum seeker centers will want to receive fewer asylum seekers in the coming years if the distribution key shows that they are far above their legal reception task. “But in that scenario,” say other parties involved, “the State Secretary can now say: fine, then I will point out your neighbors.”
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