The Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) can no longer cope with the high number of asylum applications. According to the service, ‘fundamentally different choices’ are needed in migration policy. ‘The limit of what the IND can handle is coming into view.’
This is what IND director Rhodia Maas writes in the foreword to the Status of Implementation, a kind of annual report in which the service describes the challenges of the work. The conclusion: it ‘squeezes on all sides’. The number of asylum applications is increasing, but so is the number of foreign students and labor migrants on which the IND has to decide. According to Maas, there is ‘too much work’ on the IND’s plate.
This work is also becoming increasingly complicated, because people keep submitting ‘no chance applications’ to extend their stay in the Netherlands and decisions have to be substantiated in greater detail, for example under pressure from court rulings. As a result, the files that the IND staff work with are getting thicker and more time-consuming. At the same time, the IND wants to be able to ‘take the time’ to listen to ‘the personal story’ of someone who has applied for asylum, but the service also feels the pressure to provide clarity quickly. Maas: ‘An impossible split.’
Due to the high number of applications, the backlogs are quickly mounting, meaning that asylum seekers have to wait longer and longer before they hear whether or not they can stay in the Netherlands. Asylum seekers have recently demonstrated in several places in the Netherlands against this long waiting time. Thousands of them have been waiting longer than the maximum term of 15 months. The IND expects that the number of penalty payments it will receive will ‘increase considerably’ until the end of 2024.
Maas calls this long uncertainty ‘horrible’, but also points out that her colleagues have so far decided on more applications than the 22,000 that the cabinet gave them as instructions in advance. But that doesn’t make up for the backlog. By way of comparison: last year the IND received about 40,000 applications and just under 27,000 were processed.
The IND points out that for some time now many more asylum applications have been received than the service has been set up for. The latest figures showed last month that the government expects a total of more than 70,000 asylum seekers this year. Even if IND people work their ass off, according to sources, this is only to double strongholds as a service. Neither people nor euros are available for this.
Don’t move
The IND itself also does not see such a large growth as the solution. “How big should we become then?” Maas wonders. “We have to accept that the IND cannot move along with the fluctuating number of applications.”
The IND believes that the policy should change and points to politicians. For example, the service wants to make different agreements with the ministry about how many applications they have to process, and how much money and employees are involved. Now the IND is told every year about how many applications they have to decide. That is ‘much too short’ and should be reduced to ‘at least five years’.
It should also become easier to decide on asylum applications, the IND believes, with better control and planning by, for example, working with an appointment app instead of the current queues at the application center in Ter Apel. However, responsible State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum and Migration, VVD) wants the IND to look more at the individual instead of at a group, for example Turks or Syrians, in the hope that fewer asylum applications will then be approved. The Netherlands approves more asylum applications compared to neighboring countries. However, such an individual approach would mean more work for the IND.
The government has been working for some time on both a ‘fundamental reorientation’ of asylum policy and a plan to get a ‘grip’ on migration as a whole. It also explicitly looks at the European Union. There, a new migration pact is being discussed with the member states. IND director Maas is ‘concerned about the feasibility’ of the plans that are now on the table. Those proposals would burden her department with extra work.
Watch all our videos about politics here:
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and don’t miss a thing of the stars.
#Immigration #service #longer #handle #number #asylum #applications #fundamentally #choices