Dutch immigration service no longer has to pay fines for too long asylum procedures

Asylum seekers who have been waiting too long for a decision on their residency status can no longer petition the courts for penalty payments. The Eerste Kamer, the Dutch Senate, approved a proposal by Asylum Minister Bart van den Brink to that effect. The CDA Minister intends to implement the measure within a week.

Up to September this year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) had already paid out €112 million in penalty payments to asylum seekers who have been waiting for longer than the agreed-upon six months to find out whether their application has been approved. The agency faces a massive backlog, and many asylum procedures are taking longer than they should. People who applied for asylum before the European Migration Pact took effect on June 12 face waits of up to three years for a decision.

The penalty payments served as an incentive for the government to work faster. But according to Van den Brink, the IND’s backlog has “completely spiralled out of control” and cannot be cleared in time.

Until now, asylum seekers could go to court to request a penalty payment because of the long waiting time. According to the Minister, over 200 such requests have been filed per working day in recent years. For each, an IND employee must go to court to explain why the asylum application was not processed on time. This leaves them with even less time to process applications. “The penalty payments have a destructive effect,” Van den Brink said during a Senate debate.

The Senate also voted in favor of an amendment ensuring that individuals who have not been granted a residence permit and are not returning to their country of origin can be detained—so that they "remain available for deportation," as stated in the law.

Van den Brink calls the law "a huge improvement" to the asylum system. New rules regarding the enforcement of deportation and the power to declare foreign individuals “undesirable” will also contribute to improving the asylum system.

The adopted measures were part of the asylum legislation proposed by former PVV minister Marjolein Faber. That bill had previously been rejected in the Senate after the PVV parliamentary group withdrew its support. Van den Brink had already stated earlier that he intended to implement several measures from that bill regardless.

The IND welcomes the new rules. “Penalty payments were originally introduced to encourage the IND to decide on cases more quickly. In practice, however, they primarily result in increased pressure, high costs, and an unnecessary workload, without achieving the goal of faster decision-making,” IND director Rhoda Maas said. “Too many people have to wait too long for a decision and live in prolonged uncertainty. They are entitled to timely processing by the IND. Yet, however odd it may sound, penalty payment proceedings do not help achieve that."