Some 60% of the Dutch overestimate the number of people coming to the Netherlands every year as asylum seekers, according to a new poll by Maurice de Hond for refugee organisation Vluchtelingenwerk.

This year around 13,000 people will apply for asylum in the Netherlands but only 8% of the 1,200 people polled by De Hond got the figure right. The refugee total has been around this level for years, Vluchtelingenwerk says.
Some 21% think more than 50,000 refugees will arrive in the country this year – a figure only reached once, during the Balkan conflict in 1994. Just 14% under-estimated the total.
Most people also thought each refugee brings four people with them under family reunion rules. In practice the average is less than half a person, according to Vluchtelingenwerk figures.
‘We are constantly being told there is a tsunami of asylum seekers, which in fact does not exist,’ director Dorine Manson said in a statement. ‘This is endangering our willingness to accept refugees.’