The government needs to do more to help settled asylum seekers find work that matches their skills as part of their integration into society, a new report by the socio-economic council (SER) advises.
Municipalities should have a legal obligation to support newcomers find suitable work, with financial input from The Hague, rather than leaving asylum seekers to search for jobs on their own.
The report said the current requirements were unclear and had contradictory aims, with the obligation on new migrants to learn the language and learn citizenship making it harder for them to work.
“At the moment people often have language lessons, with travel time as well. In practice that is often hard to combine with working,” a spokesman told NOS. “We say people should able to work or train and the question is how to organise language and citizenship around that.”
The cabinet has said it wants asylum seekers to be able to start looking for work after three months, rather than the current waiting period of six, but the plan still has to go through parliament.
Currently only 57% of refugees with settled status are working eight years after they are given permission to stay, compared to 81% of the entire working-age population.
Not just numbers
Work and participation minister Thierry Aartsen has set a target of getting 75,000 newcomers into work, but the SER said the numbers should not be the only issue.
The report said there was a risk of skilled migrants being locked in to jobs that did not reflect their talents. “Settled refugees and displaced Ukrainians are often employed in basic agency work that doesn’t reflect their education, experience and ambitions. For them, basic work is not a stepping-stone to a better job.”
A report by the national auditor this year concluded that the Netherlands was missing opportunities to address skills shortages by employing settled refugees in sectors with vacancies.
The SER also said financial support for language lessons should be restored for Ukrainian refugees so they had the same right as other asylum seekers. Settled refugees receive financial support up to B2 level, but this has been stopped for Ukrainians.
Yana Shcherbak, who worked as a doctor in Ukraine for 15 years before the Russian invasion, said she was held back when she first arrived in Amsterdam by the confusing and disjointed rules. “I didn’t know there were language lessons for a year,” she said.
She now works as a dental and psychiatric assistant, but hopes to retrain at Amsterdam’s OVLG hospital. “I often dream that I’m working in the hospital again, in a white coat,” she told the SER. “Then I wake up and realise where I am.”
