Dutch Rolling Up the Welcome Mat for Asylum-Seeking Immigrants

Even the long-tolerant Dutch are reaching their limit over the influx of refugees seeking political asylum or more prosperous lives in Europe.

For Dr. Toine Aarts, it came when authorities announced plans to open an asylum center in his exclusive neighborhood. He banded with eight other wealthy residents and bought the only building suitable for such a use, thus making sure it would not be a refuge for asylum seekers.

“Do you have to be so tolerant that you accept just anything?” Aarts asked, arguing that Vught’s existing asylum center at an old army base was enough.

The hospital radiologist said he feared an increase in crime and the loss of peace and tranquillity in his leafy part of the self-proclaimed “gleaming jewel” of a town.

The action of Aarts and his neighbors, who paid $1.95 million for the building, illustrates the erosion of Europeans’ sympathy for refugees. Asylum has become one of Europe’s touchiest issues.

In Belgium, the seaside resort of De Haan went to court in a failed effort to keep an asylum center out, claiming tourism would suffer. When three asylum applicants were detained for petty theft within days of the center’s opening, it was front-page news.

Real estate developers have taken a page from Aarts’ book and bought the De Haan center. The Red Cross has until August to move out the refugees, and the building will be torn down to make way for vacation houses.

Across Europe, refugees and even legal immigrants are increasingly blamed for crime. Right-wing parties exploit the issue.

“Extremist parties are rigging the issue,” said the European Union’s immigration commissioner, Anita Gradin.

But from aid workers to government ministers, the message is the same--much of the population wants the welcome mat rolled up.

“We West Europeans are very individualistic and selfish. We are primarily concerned with our prosperity,” said Luc Van Den Bossche, Belgium’s interior minister.

Few have taken the approach as far as Aarts and the Vught Nine. “This has never been shown before--citizens that take the law into their own hands,” grumbles Mayor Fred De Graaf.

Vught, a town in the southern Netherlands with 24,000 residents, is already home to one asylum center with 600 refugees, and 300 more have to register there every week. A new refugee center would have added at least 320 more.

“The Netherlands is under an awful lot of pressure,” said Joost Van Gerven, who works at Vught’s existing refugee center.

The Dutch have a centuries-old tradition of welcoming refugees. Figured by population, the country of 15 million people has the highest concentration of asylum seekers in Europe. Last September alone, 5,107 people applied for asylum.

“It cannot continue like this,” Van Gerven conceded.

The Justice Ministry state secretary, Job Cohen, warned in January that the system will “explode” if predictions prove true that the influx will rise 30% this year, to more than 60,000. The government has allocated nearly $850 million for refugee expenses this year.

“The whole population is seeing that the whole thing is getting totally out of hand,” Aarts said. “But the politicians don’t want to touch it.”

One of the main problems is officials’ inability to make quick decisions on which refugees have genuine political arguments for asylum and which are only seeking a better financial future.

“We find that people still say yes when it comes to political refugees,” said Gradin, the EU immigration commissioner.

But tolerance is low for economic refugees, she said.

“We have to be realistic. There are 18 million unemployed in the European Union,” Gradin said. “In most families, there is somebody out of work, and then you have to tell them ‘Open your doors.’ ”

The United Nations says 334,000 refugees applied for asylum in Europe in 1997, of whom 211,000 were rejected. Gradin said the percentage of true political refugees “is a minority and it’s declining.”

Kryn Verhulst, another member of the Vught Nine, agreed. “No one has any problems with true asylum seekers. But financial immigrants that come here purely for economic reasons, that’s where you have to draw the line,” he said.

Van Gerven, the asylum-center worker, said: “Sometimes we have well-dressed people here and they call the whole world over with their mobile telephone. We think, ‘What are they doing here?’ ”

Under the tolerant Dutch system, asylum seekers can drag out their application period for years, even if it is obvious they will not meet the criteria, Van Gerven said.

“Between 200 and 300 have been living here longer than three years. That is lunacy,” he said. “They have no chance of being allowed to stay, yet it is very difficult to remove them.”

Many Dutch feel other EU nations aren’t doing their share. Spain, with almost three times as many people, handles only about one-eighth the Netherlands’ number of asylum applications. Gradin said a more equitable spread could ease the pressure on the Netherlands and Germany.

Hoping to stem the flood of asylum seekers, EU nations have been strengthening border controls and tightening eligibility rules.

“It’s a big issue for every nation,” Van Gerven said. “ . . . How welcoming should you be? Where are your limits?”