ANP
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 21:19
The fall of the cabinet was inevitable, even now it appears that the travel numbers of family members of asylum seekers are lower than was thought last year. This is what outgoing Prime Minister Rutte and outgoing Minister of Justice and Security Yesilgöz told NOS.
According to the two VVD members, a harder line on asylum policy was necessary. They say this in a response to recent figures from the IND. This showed that a total of 780 stacked requests were granted in the past four years.
Those numbers contrast with what the VVD said at the time. For example, Yesilgöz spoke of “reunion after reunification”, and although she said there were no exact figures, she said in the Volkskrant that she thought it was involved thousands of cases.
‘Great exaggeration’
Now that it appears that 780 requests were granted over the past four years, D66 faction leader Jetten says that the figures at the time are “significantly exaggerated”. “I already had my doubts at the time whether the figures for family reunification after reunification were the problem in the asylum chain. I am happy with the figures now that show that these are myths. Reunification after reunification turned out not to be the bottleneck.” He is happy that the facts are now on the table.
“We have never approached it that way at all,” says Minister Yesilgöz. She acknowledges that the figures are lower than expected, but both she and outgoing Prime Minister Rutte state that measures to limit subsequent travel were part of a “broader package” to reduce the influx of asylum seekers. “The negotiating parties did not agree on that broader package at the time,” Rutte and Yesilgöz say.
More had to be done because the Netherlands was much more attractive to asylum seekers than neighboring countries, the VVD members say. According to Rutte, the asylum problem has “tripled, quadrupled” in recent years. “While 15,000 to 20,000 asylum seekers used to come to the Netherlands, this has risen to 50,000 to 60,000 in recent years,” Rutte says.
According to him, this had to be returned to what he calls “manageable numbers”, and according to him the four parties could not agree on a total package to achieve that.
‘It was about a total package’
Yesilgöz does not think she made a mistake in the figures. “It’s also about a combination of measures, that’s what I’ve always said. Unfortunately, we didn’t arrive at that combination. And you can’t say from a total package, you take one out.”
D66 leader Jetten emphasizes to the NOS that the four coalition parties have already come “very far”. He still thinks it is a great shame that the cabinet fell in July over something that “on closer inspection turned out to be less serious”. He is happy that the figures are now there. “It helps to know what the real issues are to tackle problems in the asylum chain, instead of running after a ghost.”
Rutte further speaks of a “nonsense discussion”. When the parties could not reach an agreement, he said it was “unthinkable” that the cabinet could continue.
Watch here how Rutte, Jetten and Yesilgöz disagree about last week’s IND figures and their meaning:
Rutte, Jetten and Yesilgöz about the family reunification figures
What is the difference between family reunification and family reunification on family reunification?
From the the numbers shows that 780 granted stacked requests were granted over the past four years. This concerns stacked requests within the travel family procedure.
That works as follows. Asylum seekers who have traveled to join their family members receive a so-called ‘derived asylum permit’. They are not allowed to bring family members over according to the family reunification procedure, but they are allowed to submit an independent asylum application once they have arrived in the Netherlands. If this is approved, they can start their own reunification procedure again: this is called reunification-on-reunion.
2024-02-27 20:19:51
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