Internationals lose right to IND payouts under new asylum law

International workers, students and family migrants will no longer be entitled to penalty payments when the immigration service IND misses its deadlines, the asylum ministry has said after a new law was passed by the senate on Tuesday.

The change was presented as an asylum measure, but a ministry spokesperson told Dutch News the law applies to applications for regular residence permits, including highly skilled migrants, students and family members.

The IND is supposed to make a decision on a residence application within 6 months. If it misses that deadline, applicants can go to court to demand a payment for every day it remains late. Once the new law takes effect, judges will only be able to order the IND to reach a decision within a set period.

The government abandoned plans to axe penalty payments for regular residence applicants in 2024, saying it could conflict with EU law. The ministry told us it could not yet say what had changed.

Asylum minister Bart van den Brink told MPs in September the IND had paid out close to €100 million in penalties, noting that some asylum applicants had ended up receiving over €100,000. The IND also insists these penalties do nothing to speed things up.

A spokesperson from the IND told Dutch News the service does not currently know how much in penalty payments is paid for regular permit applicants, but it will calculate the figures in the coming weeks.

D66, which voted against the asylum package in April, backed the new law. In April, D66 senator Boris Dittrich told Dutch News the party opposed the package because it would have made living in the country without valid papers a criminal offence. That measure is not part of the new law.

A D66 spokesperson acknowledged that the IND’s failure to meet deadlines “is not resolved by this amendment”, but told us on Tuesday the penalties “no longer provide an incentive to work more efficiently and have therefore outlived their purpose”.

“In our view, abolishing the penalty payments must go hand in hand with measures aimed at the ultimate goal: faster procedures, so that everyone who comes here receives clarity as quickly as possible,” the spokesperson said.