Jul 11, 2023 at 5:31 PM Update: an hour ago
Around the fall of the cabinet, figures on migration were dizzying. But exactly how many migrants came to the Netherlands last year? And what about ‘piling upon stacking’ with following family members? NU.nl puts the numbers in a row.
403,000: the total number of immigrants in 2022
In 2022, according to Statistics Netherlands, about 403,000 people came to the Netherlands. Almost half of these immigrants come from the European Union (EU), Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland or Switzerland (the so-called EFTA countries).
The 230,000 others come from countries outside the EU or EFTA. These are not only asylum seekers, but also people who come to work here (labour migrants), students and Ukrainians.
Those people generally have to report to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND), which processes their applications. This does not apply to the nearly 108,000 Ukrainians. They have been given a special status in connection with the war in their country.
Photo: Bart-Jan Dekker
39,500: the number of partners or family members traveling in connection with family reunification
Among the group of 230,000 migrants from outside the EU are many so-called family migrants. These are family members and partners of migrants who have already come to the Netherlands. Family members who travel after an asylum migrant do not belong to this group.
Most family migrants are partners or family members of labor migrants, according to Statistics Netherlands. Consider, for example, family members of an ICT specialist or the partner of someone who works in greenhouse horticulture.
Statistics Netherlands sees “that the majority of family migrants have a nationality from countries where many labor migrants come from”, says a spokesman for the statistics office. But precise figures are not (yet) available.
27,600: the number of asylum migrants
In addition to family migrants, there is a slightly smaller group of asylum migrants. These are asylum seekers and status holders. Statistics Netherlands also counts the refugees that the Netherlands ‘invites’. This is done in the context of a program of the refugee organization of the United Nations, which removes vulnerable asylum seekers from large refugee camps.
In 2022, approximately 27,600 asylum migrants came to the Netherlands. The CBS figures differ from those of the IND. Nearly 48,000 asylum applications were received there last year, 35,000 of which were from people who applied for asylum for the first time.
This difference arose because Statistics Netherlands only counts migrants who are registered in the municipal population registers. This happens if an asylum seeker has become a status holder or has been in the Netherlands for more than six months.
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11,000: the number of family members of status holders traveling in connection with family reunification
The 27,600 asylum migrants also include family members or loved ones of status holders. That is a total of about 11,000 people, roughly a quarter of the total number of family migrants. Most of them came from Syria: 7,240.
There was a lot to do around this group. The cabinet wanted to get migration under control and looked at putting the brakes on the group of family members of asylum status holders who travel to the Netherlands. In the end, the parties did not reach an agreement and the disagreement even cost the Rutte IV cabinet its head.
Unknown: relatives of family members
In the discussions about putting a brake on the number of following family members, ‘stacking’ was also discussed: family members who also bring their relatives to the Netherlands. “It’s about family reunification after family reunification,” Minister Dilan Yesilgöz-Zegerius (Justice and Security) said in a television program a day after the fall of the cabinet. Op1.
But how often this ‘stacking’ actually happens is not known. The IND is busy analyzing those figures, says a spokesperson. The service can’t say anything about it yet.
A spokesperson for the Council for Refugees says that “piling upon stacking only occurs very sporadically”. According to her, this concerns dozens of people per year. “If you are allowed to bring your family here, your family cannot automatically bring even more people here. Those refugees first have to go through the entire asylum procedure themselves. That can take years.”
2023-07-11 15:31:00
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