Saturday 28 April 2007
The cabinet and local authorities have reached agreement on the main points of the long-awaited amnesty (general pardon) for asylum seekers, junior justice minister Nebahat Albayrak confirmed on Friday evening.
Details are not yet being made public, but Albayrak has agreed to make €55m available to local councils to pay for housing and other costs.
It is still not clear how many asylum seekers will be covered by the measure which will apply to people who arrived in the Netherlands before April 2001. Refugee organisation Vluchtelingenwerk told the Volkskrant between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals could be involved.
The cabinet has also agreed that people who lied once about their identity would also be eligible for a residency permit, to the fury of right-wing parties. 'That is completely scandalous,' Liberal (VVD) MP Henk Kamp told news agency ANP.
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