Pandemic Forces "Illegal Immigrants" in Netherlands to Return Home

The corona pandemic is forcing groups of illegal immigrants to leave the Netherlands(known also as Holland) due to the lack of jobs.

The authorities and charity groups cooperate to book flights to travel those immigrants to their country of origin and create suitable conditions to re-assimilate them again in their homeland.

This is evidenced by the annual figures of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the largest organization in the Netherlands that deals with the voluntary return of rejected asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.

Given all travel restrictions due to the coronavirus (COVID-19), the organization helped far fewer people to return in 2020 compared to the previous year: 1,815 compared to 3,035.

This decrease is also due to the fact that the flow of asylum seekers was less in the past year, which also means that fewer of them left the country.

For example, 182 Brazilians, most of them illegal immigrants, returned, compared to 105 in 2019, and 100 Indonesians also returned without. Residency papers, roughly the same number in 2019, a year without travel restrictions.

Peter Maas from ILO says: "Because of the Corona crisis, the immigrants did not have a job anymore, and they got into trouble as a result, and then they applied to us for help in their return."

In the top 5 nationalities, Albanians are at the top, just like last year, in 2020, 280 people returned to Albania via the International Organization for Migration, compared to 467 in 2019.

This mainly relates to migrants who were stopped in the Netherlands while heading to England in trucks, they are called "the climbers."

Rejected migrants and asylum seekers who opt for voluntary return through the International Organization for Migration (IOM) receive the correct documentation, travel arrangement, financial assistance, and possibly reintegration assistance in the country of origin.