Estimates suggest that 70,000 new asylum seekers will arrive this year, an amount three times higher than the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) has said that it can handle, and far beyond the country’s capacity to shelter.
Many of the temporary accommodations set up in cruise ships and convention centers after last summer’s influx crisis — when hundreds of refugees were forced to sleep outside the Ter Apel reception center — will be shut down in the coming months.