Amsterdam is also reaching the limit of how many asylum seekers the city can accommodate

2023-04-22 01:00:25

1400 asylum seekers are staying on the MS Galaxy at the Coentunnel.Sculpture Joris van Gennip

It was the summer of 2021: the Taliban had just returned to power in Afghanistan and tens of thousands of people were fleeing. In Ter Apel it soon became apparent that the COA had too few reception places and the StayOkay hostel in the Center became one of the emergency reception locations.

It would be a short crisis, but two years later the pressure on the reception chain has only increased further. Structurally, COA lacks beds and StayOkay has never become a hostel again. In Ter Apel, hundreds of asylum seekers had to sleep outside last year, the court ruled that the Dutch shelter does not meet humanitarian requirements.

And again a large refugee flow of 67,000 people is taken into account, with the government again looking at the capital. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Eric van der Burg is more often told no than yes in his search for new emergency shelter locations. Alkmaar, among others (the council even fell over the issue here), Wijdemeren (North Holland) and Heumen (Gelderland) recently gave zero complaints.

Amsterdam is becoming more cautious

Even the always benevolent Amsterdam is becoming more cautious. Since 2021, the city has hosted 5,500 more people, partly due to the war in Ukraine. The lion’s share of asylum seekers stay in the A&O Hostel in Zuidoost (900 places) and on the MS Galaxy asylum boat (1400) near the Coentunnel. But a month ago, alderman Rutger Groot Wassink (Asylum Affairs) refused a second boat where 1200 people can stay.

The reception chain in the capital is coming under increasing pressure. The city is short of civil servants and space for reception locations. For each refugee, a municipality receives 18 euros per day, but that is for housing, food or living expenses for residents. Freeing up civil servants who have to look for suitable locations and residents’ communication is at their own expense.

And so there is more pain for the city: last year it turned out that almost two hundred asylum children could not go to school for months, even though they were entitled to it. If teachers are found for these classes at all, this could be at the expense of regular education, which is also struggling with a teacher shortage.

Shortage of medical help

In addition, the reception puts pressure on healthcare in Amsterdam. Refugees with psychological problems can hardly go to specialists, because the waiting lists in the city are already long. As a precaution, MS Galaxy is no longer taking care of vulnerable people. And then there is a major shortage of general practitioners in Amsterdam, which makes it more difficult to provide refugees with acute medical care if the reception expands even further.

The distribution law should have entered into force at the beginning of this year, as a result of which every municipality would be obliged to organize shelter in proportion to its size. But within the national VVD party, that arrangement led to a political crisis in November. The result was an amended, but mainly postponed bill about which the Council of State has serious doubts: it called it ‘unnecessarily complex’.

More asylum seekers than in 2015

In two weeks, the law seems to be passed by the House of Representatives, but that is too late for the large group of asylum seekers who are traveling to the Netherlands this year. Their expected number of 67,000 is greater than last year (maximum 55,000) or in 2015, when the war in Syria and Iraq brought many people to Europe (59,100) – not even counting Ukrainians. “We don’t have it in order,” Van der Burg said tellingly in the Chamber on Tuesday.

RTL News calculated last year that 194 of the 342 municipalities have not received anyone in the past ten years. A fairer distribution would also relieve the pressure on issues such as education, healthcare and safety in cities that already arrange shelter. Amsterdam therefore prefers to see Van der Burg pick up the phone to persuade other municipalities to take people in after all.

Nevertheless, Amsterdam has a ‘short and long list’ with locations for new shelters ready and the council is ‘always prepared’ to look at what is possible, says Groot Wassink. But if the phone rings while asylum seekers’ centers are overflowing, he does set conditions. He wants guarantees of care and education support, so that people do not languish for months without help and a greater chance of incidents. “I can’t put any numbers on it, but in Amsterdam there is also a limit to the number of people we can accommodate.”