Dutch election candidates make migration a key marketing campaign subject within the crowded Netherlands
TER APEL, Netherlands — It is a well-known sight on this distant rural city: a migrant in a scarf and thick winter coat carrying her belongings to the overcrowded reception middle as a storm brews over the flat panorama.
For many right here and throughout this nation as soon as referred to as a beacon of tolerance, it’s too acquainted.
“Immigration is spiraling out of control,” Henk Tapper mentioned whereas visiting his daughter in Ter Apel two weeks earlier than the Netherlands votes in parliamentary elections on Nov. 22.
Candidates throughout the political spectrum are campaigning on pledges to deal with migration issues which might be crystallized in Ter Apel, simply over 120 miles northeast of Amsterdam. Once largely recognized for its monastery, the city has now develop into synonymous with Dutch struggles to accommodate massive numbers of asylum-seekers.
In the summer season of 2022, tons of of migrants had been compelled to sleep outdoors as a result of the reception middle was full. The Dutch department of Doctors Without Borders despatched a group to assist the migrants, the primary time it was compelled to deploy inside the Netherlands.
The middle nonetheless is overcrowded and locals complain of crime and public order issues blamed on migrants who wander in small teams via the village.
It shouldn’t be solely asylum seekers, although. Political events are also pledging to crack down on labor migrants and international college students, who now make up some 40% of college enrollments.
Tapper mentioned he plans to vote for anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party which advocates a halt in asylum seekers and opting out of EU and United Nations agreements and treaties on refugees and asylum.
The migration debate in the Netherlands echoes throughout Europe, the place governments and the European Union are searching for methods to rein in migration. Italy lately introduced plans to accommodate asylum seekers in Albania.
In Germany, the center-left authorities and 16 state governors have agreed on a raft of measures to curb the excessive variety of migrants flowing into the nation. They embody dashing up asylum procedures and proscribing advantages for asylum-seekers.
Outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte was a part of an EU delegation visiting Tunisia over the summer season to hammer out a take care of the North African nation meant to fight the customarily deadly smuggling of migrants throughout the Mediterranean Sea.
Meanwhile, many Dutch voters are calling for harder home insurance policies on this nation as soon as famed for its open-arm method to refugees relationship all the way in which again to the Pilgrim Fathers who lived in Leiden after fleeing spiritual persecution in England and earlier than setting sail for what’s now the United States.
One of the main candidates to succeed Rutte is herself a former refugee. Now, Dilan Yeşilgöz, chief of the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) advocates making her adopted nation much less welcoming.
“Our laws, our regulations are … way more attractive than the laws and regulations of the countries around us, which makes us more attractive for people to come here,” she advised The Associated Press.
Yeşilgöz is the daughter of Turkish human rights activists who fled to the Netherlands when she was a toddler.
“Being a refugee myself, I think it’s very important that … we take the decisions to make sure that true refugees have a safe place,” she mentioned. “And politicians who refuse to take those difficult decisions they are saying to the true refugees, but also to the Dutch public: ‘You’re on your own.’”
The vote is shaping as much as be very shut, with the VVD and the lately fashioned conservative populist social gathering New Social Contract main in polls towards a center-left bloc of Labor and Green Left.
According to the official Dutch statistics company, simply over 400,000 migrants arrived in the Netherlands final 12 months – that features asylum seekers, foreigners coming to work in the Netherlands and abroad college students. The quantity was pushed greater by 1000’s of Ukrainians fleeing the warfare sparked by Russia’s invasion.
Ekram Jalboutt, born to Palestinian dad and mom in a Syrian camp, has been granted asylum in the Netherlands and doesn’t like what she sees within the debate about migration. “I hate the idea of playing with this card of migration in this political game,” she mentioned on the headquarters of the Dutch Refugee Council, the place she now works.
The lately fashioned New Social Contract social gathering needs to set a “guideline” ceiling of fifty,000 migrants a 12 months allowed into the Netherlands – together with asylum seekers, labor migrants and college students. Along with the VVD, it needs to introduce an asylum system that differentiates between individuals fleeing persecution and people fleeing warfare. The latter group would have fewer rights, together with the fitting to household reunifications. Acrimonious discussions on such strikes introduced down the final ruling Dutch coalition in July.
The variety of new arrivals blends into one other main drawback Tapper highlighted- a power scarcity of housing on this crowded nation of about 18 million individuals.
“There are houses for foreigners, and Dutch people can hardly get a house … that is a bit strange here in the Netherlands,” he mentioned.
Advocates for cracking down on migration argue that folks granted refugee standing are additionally fast-tracked into scarce social housing and may leapfrog Dutch individuals who can languish for years on ready lists.
The Dutch Refugee Council argues that refugees make up solely a small proportion of individuals whose functions for social housing are fast-tracked.
“The political debate about asylum and migration is very polarized,” mentioned Anna Strolenberg, a spokeswoman for the council. “We see most political parties proposing solutions that are too simplistic, that are not realistic, and they’re actually capitalizing on the gut feelings of people.”
