Lower Than Expected: Asylum Applications in the Netherlands Decrease in 2021, Contrary to Government Predictions

• Bass deVries

  Research Editor

The number of people applying for asylum in the Netherlands in the first five months of this year was lower than the high predictions. From January to May, the influx at the centers of the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) was 18,356. That is about 1,300 lower than in the same period last year, while the government has assumed a clear increase to date.

At the end of April, the cabinet predicted that the asylum influx would rise to a “most likely” total of more than 70,000 in 2023. Last week Prime Minister Mark Rutte received strong criticism from party members at a VVD meeting about these high numbers. “70,000 people, our society cannot handle that,” said party chairman Sophie Hermans, for example. Her colleague and coalition partner Mirjam Bikker of the ChristenUnie called such an influx at a party congress “tolerable”.

So far, reality has lagged behind that forecast. The arrival of asylum seekers in Europe follows a fairly fixed rhythm: for example, there are more refugees in the summer than in the winter. Even if this is taken into account, thousands more asylum seekers should have come to the Netherlands up to and including May in order to approach 70,000 by the end of December.

The situation in asylum reception facilities has therefore been stable since the beginning of the year, with a occupation of some 53,000 people. Incidentally, that is still more than the number of places available in regular centers. Some 16,000 asylum seekers are in (crisis) emergency shelter in, among other things, event halls, the quality of which has been determined by the court to be substandard. However, according to those involved, the current numbers increase the chance that the situation in the shelter will remain manageable this summer.

Also in the figures provided by the national government publishes weekly no major increase in the influx has been observed to date. The Immigration and Naturalization Service will probably publish its figures for May early next week, but the development up to and including April was in line with that of the COA.

“The miracles are not out of the world, but the chance that we will reach that 70,000 is getting smaller,” says a source who was involved in drawing up the forecasts for 2023. were high. They just haven’t gone any higher so far.”

This is even more striking because, according to insiders, a clear increase has been reported in the European Union as a whole in this current year, with about 34 percent up to and including the first week of April. The Netherlands is clearly lagging behind in this respect.

“The south of Europe is definitely being confronted with more asylum seekers,” says migration researcher Myrthe Wijnkoop of the Clingendael Institute. “It is not illogical to assume that this will still be reflected in the figures in the Netherlands in the coming months. It is currently unsettled on the edges of Europe. See, for example, the violence in Sudan that can have consequences for the refugee flows. Or the aftermath of the election campaign in Turkey, in which it became clear that many Turks would like to see the millions of Syrian refugees disappear from their country as quickly as possible.”

However, according to Wijnkoop, this does not necessarily mean that there will be more than 15,000 more asylum seekers than last year, as the cabinet expects. Like her fellow researcher Carolus Grütters of Radboud University’s Center for Migration Law, she emphasizes that this prediction also contains a political component. The ministry’s figures prepare careful scenarios; the government then determines which of those scenarios will be chosen as guiding policy.

“In the past”, says Wijnkoop, “the low scenario was often chosen. As a result, the reality was often disappointing and insufficient money, personnel and reception places were available. of the so-called middle scenario. Perhaps also because then the urgency of the problem is immediately clear. The disadvantage of this is that it can cause more unrest than is perhaps strictly necessary.”

Last Thursday, European ministers reached an agreement on migration. But it is clear that these agreements, if they do indeed lead to a lower influx, will only take effect in about three years. In the short term, the cabinet expects more from, among other things, an agreement with Tunisia to halt migration by boat from that country.