12 July 2012 Following a foreign affairs ministry report criticizing the treatment of homosexuals in Iraq, Immigration Minister Gerd Leers has announced that they qualify for asylum in the Netherlands. In a briefing regarding the decision Leers noted that in order to qualify, individuals will have to prove that they are from Iraq.
21 June 2012 Negotiations over the place of a group of Iraqi asylum seekers in the Netherlands continue. Immigration Minister Gerd leers and his Iraqi counterpart Shafiq Duski met in the Hague this week and will again meet in Baghdad in September. The Netherlands offered a fund of 5.5million euros to Iraq to reintegrate…
2 May 2012 The Netherlands may drop the planned ban on the burqa and on dual nationality which are currently making their way through the national parliament. The change comes with the fall of the minority government, as those aspects of government policy influenced by the presence of the anti-Islam PVV (Freedom Party) enter…
MP Tofik Dibi of the Green Left has accused the Dutch government of inflating immigration statistics in order to justify their affiliation with the anti-immigration party PVV. Dibi told ANP, “It is bizarre. You would think ministers were pleased the figures were not as high as they make them out to be.” The discussion centers…
7 October 2011 Dutch Immigration Minister Gerd Leers, stated in a recent interview that “migration enriches our society”. The member of the Christian Democrats stated that a society which tries to curb immigration is “on the wrong track” and said that he regrets the anti-immigration political and social debate of the past years.
