“He couldn’t believe it at first,” said Eikelboom on NPO Radio 1 about Jacob’s first reaction to the news. It seemed that the mother and son would be deported to Armenia. The two fled the war in Syria in 2015. They came to the Netherlands by boat via Greece, to be reunited with their families.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled that the two should be deported to Armenia because they are Armenian Christians and the mother had an Armenian passport. She had applied for this because she thought it would increase the chances of obtaining a residence permit.
The two protested the deportation because they are from Syria and do not know Armenia well. Tina said she was there once in her life for four days to collect the passport. Jacob had never been there. Moreover, according to lawyer Eikelboom, it is debatable whether Armenia is a safe country.
Petition
A petition has been launched and has been signed more than 166,000 times. The boy also joined a talk show last week Eve to discuss the matter. He is a HAVO student at a school in Ubbergen, Gelderland.
Several asylum applications were rejected. It is not yet known why Tina and Jacob have now received a residence permit. “That cannot be said with certainty,” explains Eikelboom. “There was still an open request, perhaps legal arguments were decisive. The petition also helped. I think everyone saw that it was unreasonable to expel them.”
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