Plans to make it a criminal offence to be in the Netherlands without proper papers will also affect the international community, D66 senator Boris Dittrich has told Dutch News.

D66, the largest party in the current coalition, has been against two bills to further restrict asylum applications from the outset, and Dittrich said he hopes the measures will not pass in next week’s senate vote.

The two bills – drafted by former PVV asylum minister Marjolein Faber – would shorten asylum permits from five to three years, abolish permanent residency for refugees, tighten family reunification, introduce a two-status refugee system, and make being in the Netherlands without papers a criminal offence punishable by up to six months in prison.

The criminalisation clause would affect the international community far beyond asylum seekers. Dittrich told us the law as drafted would apply to anyone in the Netherlands without valid residence papers, regardless of how they came to be in that situation.

“Just imagine you live in the Netherlands and you have a contract to work for a Dutch company,” he said. “After three years your contract ends, but you don’t go back. The day after, technically you are illegal in our country. Would you be committing a crime? No, I wouldn’t say that.”

The same logic applies, he said, to international students whose residence permits expire after their studies, to people who fall in love and stay on after a job ends, and to anyone whose paperwork lapses.

Asylum minister Bart van den Brink told the senate on Tuesday that prosecution would be limited to a group of 100 to 300 “return frustrators” – rejected asylum seekers actively obstructing their own deportation. But Dittrich said that ministerial promise has no force in law.

“The way the amendment is written, you can prosecute any illegal immigrant. Just imagine the PVV would enter a new government again and they would say: now we’re going to hunt down all the illegal immigrants. That’s what their senator, Van Hattem, said in the debate.”

EU Migration Pact

Dittrich’s argument for letting the bills fail rests partly on the EU Migration Pact, which takes effect across all member states on June 12. “About 80% of what these laws would cover will be in there,” he said. “And then the minister can present a new law.”

The Council of State has made the same point in formal advice, noting that the two-status system, shorter permits, and harder family reunification all arrive via the Pact in June regardless. The criminalisation clause is the main element that does not.

The vote is due to take place next week and it is still unclear if the senate will vote in favour. The anti-immigration PVV has said it would vote against if senators agree to remove a clause that would criminalise anyone helping undocumented people – soup kitchen volunteers, lawyers, church workers – while keeping illegal stay itself a criminal offence.

Without it, the CDA has said it cannot back the wider laws and without the CDA’s six senators, the package falls.