By Lotte van Liempd
People who reside in the Netherlands without residency permits aren’t committing a crime. However, they struggle to access basic human rights, such as shelter, food and income. While the Dutch national government is restrictive in who gets support and how, municipalities provide basic services to those who fulfill the conditions. How this is set up depends on the municipality. The political orientation of a municipal council has big impacts on what services are provided for undocumented people, and how well they are able to access their human rights. It’s important that you vote in the municipal elections on the 14th, 15th and 16th of March, to make sure undocumented people’s rights are protected.
Undocumented migrants in the Netherlands
The Dutch Center for Science and Documentation (WODC) estimated in 2020 that there were between 23,000 and 58,000 undocumented people in the Netherlands. The researchers estimate that the number of undocumented migrants in the Netherlands has decreased over the past decades, mostly due to restrictive legislation. People have different reasons for not holding a (valid) residency permit. For instance, they can be asylum seekers whose claims were rejected, victims of human trafficking, people looking for a better life, people unable to go back to their countries of origin or people who left the partner upon whom their residency permit depended. Some of these undocumented migrants have been in the Netherlands for decades. As there are no definitive numbers on the population of undocumented migrants, it’s not clear what nationality they mostly hold. The people are as diverse as the reasons why they’re here, but they have one thing in common: They are granted only a few human rights and often lead a tough life.
Since the 1990s, the Dutch government has implemented an active ‘discouragement policy’ to make it unattractive for people to stay in the Netherlands ‘illegally’. For example, the 1998 ‘Koppelingswet’ (linkage law) makes it impossible to rent a house, work, go to school or get welfare benefits without a residency permit. The idea is that if you make life in the Netherlands tough enough, people will go back to their countries of origin. But in reality, many people don’t want to or simply can’t go back. Sometimes they find undeclared work, but many employers are hesitant to employ them as they can face high fines. Undocumented people can be detained, get a criminal record or even be deported if the police finds them working. Amnesty International has published various reports about the inhumanity of migrant detention. Here, people can be held for up to 18 months awaiting their deportation or asylum procedure, without having committed a crime. Even if people are not caught by the police, they often struggle to access housing, food and basic items, leading to high rates of homelessness and medical issues due to constant stress and insecurity.
Moussa, a 37-year old rejected asylum seeker from Niger, calls his life as an undocumented migrant in the Netherlands a free prison life. He says “I don’t want to be here, but I’m stuck. I would love to do something useful, but I don’t have the chance. I want to contribute to society, but now I feel like a freeloader. Every day is the same and I don’t know how long it will last”. Moussa is unable to go back to Niger because he doesn’t have identification papers. The Embassy of Niger doesn’t want to give him a laissez-passer, a temporary travel document, if he doesn’t provide them with a birth certificate, something that he struggles to get as he doesn’t have a lot of family in Niger anymore. He’s been stuck in the Netherlands for almost ten years, and living in NGO shelters and on the street.
Human Rights
Undocumented migrants have a right to medically necessary healthcare and legal council. Undocumented children have a right to education and housing, but can be placed in ‘family shelters’ from the government, where the government can work towards their deportation. Undocumented adults can access shelter in a ‘freedom restricting location’ (VBL). They are allowed to go outside, but not outside their municipality. Migrants can only access these shelters if they cooperate with their own deportation, which has to happen within 12 weeks. For those who do not want to or those who can’t because of administrative hurdles, there is no government shelter available.
In 2013, the European Committee on Social Rights (ECSR) decided that the Dutch government was in violation of the European Social Charter by not providing undocumented migrants with shelter, food and basic necessities. The ECSR considered especially that all people, also undocumented migrants, have the right to human dignity and to be protected from the risk of ‘serious, irreparable damage’ to life and bodily integrity that being homeless can pose. The policies of the Dutch government pose a risk of violating undocumented migrants’ right to life. However, in 2016 the Dutch Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State (ABRvS), the highest administrative judge in the Netherlands, decided that it doesn’t consider the European Social Charter to apply to undocumented migrants. This means that the Dutch government doesn’t consider itself to be in violation of any legally binding agreements, which makes it impossible for undocumented migrants to claim their rights based on the ECSR’s decision.
The role of municipalities
While the national government is against providing all undocumented migrants with basic necessities, municipalities have felt a more direct need to prevent homelessness. For years, many municipalities have been providing shelter and basic services to rejected asylum seekers and other undocumented migrants. They do this both out of care for the migrants themselves, as well as out of the idea that preventing homelessness is better for the ‘public order’ and safety.
After the 2014 ECSR decision, different municipalities have started providing so-called ‘Bed, Bath, Bread’ (BBB) shelters. These are quite basic shelters mostly for rejected asylum seekers. A condition for accessing these shelter facilities is that people have to cooperate with their deportation, which the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has strongly condemned. The set-up of these shelters can vary: Some municipalities give people 24-hour shelter, while others only provide places to stay the night. Some municipalities have given people only shelter and food, while others also provide money and social-legal support. This variation mostly depends on the political views of the municipal council.
In 2019, the national government started a pilot program launched in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Groningen and Eindhoven, called the ‘National Provisions for ‘Aliens’’ (LVV). At the end of the pilot, this program is meant to replace the locally existing BBB shelters throughout the country. Between these five cities, there are significant contrasts in the set-up of the program. Each municipality negotiates with local NGOs and other civil society organizations about how they want to set it up. For example, a report by the Verwey-Jonker institute describes that the program in Rotterdam admits mostly people who want to actively cooperate with their return. They get six months of shelter and social-legal support. On the other hand, in Utrecht the shelter has no end-date. People receive shelter and social-legal support for as long as necessary, and there is just as much focus on getting people a residency permit as there is on returning them to their country of origin. John van Tilborg, director of one of the NGOs that works with the LVV in Groningen, emphasizes that not everyone’s claim to asylum or residence has been rightfully rejected. He says that “Not on the street, but only in the shelter do people find the peace to start thinking about their future again.” Not only do people need time to calmly think about their future, it can also take a long time to get documents that are necessary for a repeated asylum claim or for returning to their country of origin.
For Moussa, participating in the LVV program hasn’t changed much about his situation. Even though he wants to return, the embassy of Niger is still not cooperating. He remains stuck in the shelter facilities, but he’s one of the lucky ones. Many other participants of the LVV program he was in were forced to leave the shelter because they didn’t have any perspective on a residency permit, and they didn’t want to, or couldn’t, return to their country of origin. One proposed solution for the continued problems with the LVV program is to give cities more room to act. The Amsterdam councilman Rutger Groot Wassink wants to provide cities with the discretionary power to grant people residency permits on humanitarian grounds, for people like Moussa who have been stuck in illegality for years. Most of the parties running for the current municipal elections have different stances on how to best care for undocumented migrants.
Municipal elections
The Dutch municipal elections take place on the 14th, 15th and 16th of March. The political orientation of a municipal council plays a big role in undocumented people’s access to shelter and human rights.
In Utrecht, different parties have different stances on providing shelter for undocumented migrants. GroenLinks, currently the biggest party in the council, states in their party program that they want to continue giving shelter and support to undocumented migrants within the LVV and also to the people that don’t qualify for the LVV conditions. They want to work towards giving people access to education and internships, possibilities to file a police report if necessary and towards the legalization of stateless people. D66 in Utrecht talks considerably less about undocumented migrants than GroenLinks, but also states that they want to continue the LVV program. The VVD Utrecht doesn’t say anything about supporting migrants, let alone undocumented migrants. One of the newcomers to the municipal elections in Utrecht is Bij1, who explicitly recognize the vulnerable situation of undocumented migrants. They don’t just want to continue and improve the LVV, but also create an unconditional BBB shelter and introduce a ‘city passport’ to give undocumented migrants access to education, work and housing. The party programs of the parties running in the upcoming municipal betray a difference in priority: Some parties think about this topic a lot and want to support undocumented migrants. Others are actively opposed to undocumented migrants in the city or do not seem consider them at all.
Municipal councils decide on local issues, but that issues are ‘local’ doesn’t mean that they are small: they impact infrastructure, housing, education, health care, climate and migration. Dependent on the ruling coalition, municipal shelter and basic rights for undocumented migrants can be improved upon, or they can be hollowed out. Municipalities have more influence on the daily lives of inhabitants than you might think, and it is important that you decide who represents your views on these issues.
Vote on the 14th, 15th or 16th of March for a party that you align with. EU citizens can vote in the municipality where they’re registered. As a non-EU citizen, you can vote if you’ve been registered in the Netherlands for 5 years. You can check the party programs on their local websites. You can also check which party your opinions align with (using some google translate) with an online vote advisor.
In Utrecht: https://utrecht.kieskompas.nl/nl. In other cities: https://stemwijzer.nl/.