Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Dutch deputy minister Nebahat Albayrak for immigration proposed significant changes in the way the Netherlands deals with asylum seekers last week. With the support of the cabinet, she presented her plans to speed up application processes for minors and promised to end the collective granting of residency permits to people from especially dangerous countries.
Underage asylum seekers are currently often left dangling in the bureaucratic application procedure for years before finally being deported back to their countries of origin. They are given temporary residency permits as long as they are underage, but these are mostly withdrawn after their 18th birthday.
Under current Dutch law only asylum seekers who can prove they are at serious risk of violence in their home countries qualify for a residency permit. This rule applies to underage asylum seekers as well, but they receive more lenient treatment because they are minors.
"This gives children false hope," deputy minister Albayrak said explaining her plans last week. Unaccompanied underage asylum seekers, as they are known, can live in the Netherlands for years, attending school until they are suddenly cut off from all public services, including health care, education and foster care facilities, after they become adults. Many of these 18-year-olds disappear and remain in the Netherlands illegally, according to Albayrak.
Under her new plan, the temporary residency permits will be scrapped and all applications from minors should be processed within one year. Her policy dictates both the young asylum seeker and immigration services have three weeks to prepare for the procedure that should then be conducted within eight days. As soon as a child’s application has been rejected, their swift return will be arranged by the so-called Return and Departure Service, a government agency charged with making sure unwanted immigrant are sent back. The agency tries to seek out possible biological parents in the child’s country of origin.
Foster care organisation Nidos, the independent government body responsible for the welfare of underage asylum seekers, hailed the accelerated application time as an improvement. But, according to Tin Verstegen, managing director of Nidos, if children are still not deported within a year or two in spite of increased efforts, they should be given a permanent legal status. The current cut-off point is three years.
Albayrak, however, said she did not intend to reduce this period any further. "This would take away every incentive to cooperate with authorities. Any underage asylum seeker able to frustrate the application procedure for a year would be granted a residency permit automatically."
Aid organisation Vluchtelingenwerk said it opposes the move, because the accelerated application procedure will be error-prone.
In a related policy shift, the minister wants to end collective protection for asylum seekers, underage and adult, who come from countries listed as extremely dangerous by the government. Currently asylum seekers from the Ivory Coast and Sudan qualify for this status and are given residency permits relatively easily. The automatic acceptance of people from Iraq and Somalia was recently terminated.
Because other European countries do not have a similar system, the policy draws people from these countries to the Netherlands in disproportionate numbers, Albayrak said. In the future, even asylum seekers from hazardous countries will have to prove they will be in serious danger if they return home.
This move has met with even stronger opposition from Vluchtelingenwerk. "This policy will lead to people being deported to life-threatening situations," managing director Edwin Huizing said.
A majority in Dutch parliament supports Albayrak’s new policies.
Source: NRC