The Immigration and Naturalization Service IND will not succeed in resolving the backlog in asylum applications this year. A special task force had been set up to clear the backlog, but it will not meet the self-imposed deadline.
It is expected that seven thousand cases will remain by the end of the year, state secretary Ankie Broekers-Knol (Asylum and Migration) reports Wednesday. She cites a number of reasons for the delay. There were more cases than initially thought: more than fifteen thousand instead of fourteen thousand.
About 6,500 of these have been dealt with. This will probably also work with fifteen hundred other cases this year. That leaves about seven thousand cases for next year. The service expects to have cleared the backlog by mid-2021.
The corona crisis also threw a spanner in the works: during the first wave, asylum processes came to a complete standstill, so that the task force could only start on 1 May. When work did get underway, it went slower than previously expected due to the corona measures.
According to the IND, the task force has prevented a large number of penalty payments. The IND has so far paid out EUR 11.5 million this year. It is expected that an additional EUR 32 million will be added this year and next.
It is estimated that due to the previously incurred delays, the IND will pay out a total of 70 million euros. This amount is not yet complete, because penalty payments are only paid after an asylum application has been processed. The law has now been temporarily amended, so that new applicants for asylum can no longer demand a penalty.
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