While increasing numbers of Dutch citizens are struggling to cope with ever-rising living costs, the outgoing and profoundly distrusted cabinet of acting Prime Minister Mark Rutte has announced plans to disburse a colossal €30 million in penalty payments to asylum seekers for failing to process their applications on time.
Outgoing State Secretary for Justice and Security Eric van der Burg, responsible for overseeing matters related to migration and asylum, told the Amsterdam-based newspaper De Telegraaf the tens of millions of euros to be paid to asylum seekers by the Dutch state follows, in part, from the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s (IND) inability to process an increasing number of applications.
The IND, van der Burg said, simply “cannot handle the work,” highlighting that backlogs of asylum applications continue to accumulate not only because there are more to process but also due to an increased number of appeals and case laws that thicken files and make processing more laborious.
According to De Telegraaf, the sum of penalty payments, outlined in The Spring Memorandum, amounts to roughly €7,500 per asylum seeker.
The amount to be doled out to asylum seekers this year represents a 172% increase from last year when €11 million were disbursed. Barring a significant change to the Dutch state’s migration policy and asylum system, the problem is expected to worsen in the years to come.
The jaw-dropping figure announced by van der Burg was deservedly met with indignation by Former Dutch MEP Jan Eppink, previously a member of the conservative, sovereigntist Forum for Democracy (FvD) and JA 21 who now serves as a politician for the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB).
“This is how asylum seekers become rich while sleeping in hotels and on cruise ships. Van de Burg is mopping with the tap open. Quickly turn off the tap. Asylum stop!” he wrote on X.
Asylum seekers aren’t the only ones who are, in the words of Eppink, “becoming rich,” off of the backs of Dutch workers paying into the Netherlands’ dysfunctional migration and asylum system.
The Van der Valk family, which owns the largest hotel chain in the Netherlands, operating more than 65 locations across the country, is also cashing in. From its hotel in the northern town of Uden, alone, the family rakes in nearly ten million euros per year in state funds for housing asylum seekers and migrants, according to an analysis done by Brabants Dagblad.
Party for Freedom (PVV) Senator Alexander van Hattem calls the hotel’s arrangement with the government “decadent asylum madness.”
