Mikael, 11, submits new application to stay in the Netherlands

The 11-year-old boy, who was born in Amsterdam and faces deportation to Armenia, is the subject of a new application to be allowed to stay in the Netherlands, sources have told the Parool.

The request has been submitted via Mikael’s father, who lives elsewhere in the Netherlands and has a residency permit, the sources say. He is asking the immigration service IND to allow the boy to stay on the grounds of the right to family life.

The Council of State ruled last month that the boy can be deported even though he was born and brought up in the Netherlands and immigration minister Marjolein Faber refused to intervene, saying it was up to the IND.

The minister’s right of discretion in complicated cases was removed when the amnesty for child refugees was abolished in 2019.

However, the law does still give her the right to allow people to stay “if someone’s personal situation demands it,” Carolus Grutters, a migration law expert at Radboud University in Nijmegen told the Volkskrant earlier.

Faber, a minister on behalf of the far right PVV, has said Mikael’s mother is to blame for the boy’s predicament, saying she should have left the country years ago.

Nearly 90,000 people have signed a petition calling the government to rethink the decision to deport Mikael.

The leaders of seven opposition parties, including D66, the SP and the GroenLinks PvdA alliance, have also called on  Faber not to deport an the boy, who is due to start secondary school next week.

The new application means the deportation is now “on hold”, the sources said.

Multiple applications

Faber said on Tuesday afternoon that the new request showed that something needed to be done about multiple applications.

Acknowledging the youngster had the right to make a new request, Faber said “that is how things are organised here”. However, “of course we have to look at this piling up of requests because you can’t go on like this and you can’t make policy in this way,” she told reporters.

Faber has promised to introduce the strictest asylum policy possible in the Netherlands.