Social media in the Netherlands lit up with claims that the Senate had voted to make irregular migration legal. The reality is more nuanced: the Senate rejected a far-right bill that would have turned an administrative violation into a criminal offence, but being in the country without valid papers remains illegal under existing administrative law.
The bill, known as the Asylum Emergency Measures Act, was drafted by Geert Wilders' PVV party during the previous government. It aimed to harden Dutch asylum policy ahead of the EU Migration Pact's full implementation in June. But the Senate's rejection does not mean irregular migrants are now suddenly legal — they still face detention and deportation under the Aliens Act 2000.
What the Senate Actually Decided
Under current Dutch law, living in the country without a permit is an administrative infraction, not a crime. The PVV bill sought to reclassify it as a criminal act, which would have allowed police to arrest people solely for being undocumented. Betty de Hart, professor of transnational families and migration law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, told Euronews: “They [the Senate] haven't voted against making illegal migrants 'illegal' … They just voted against the criminality and being able to arrest them on the basis of being undocumented.”
De Hart explained that administrative detention already allows authorities to hold people for deportation, sometimes for long periods. Criminalising irregular stay would actually make removal harder, because individuals would first need to serve a criminal sentence. “Under administrative and migration law, they can be removed the next day, basically,” she added.
The ‘Cup of Soup’ Controversy
A key reason the bill failed was its potential impact on humanitarian aid. Legal experts warned that criminalising irregular stay could make it a crime to offer food or shelter to undocumented migrants — a scenario that sparked the famous “cup of soup” debate in the Netherlands. Churches and NGOs protested that volunteers in soup kitchens could face prosecution for complicity.
Carolus Grütters, research fellow at Radboud University's Centre for Migration Law, noted: “There was a lot of protest against this bill and in particular against this part on 'illegal stay' … The problem as such with this is that illegal stay is not an action but an administrative code; one does not have the right papers.”
Justice Minister David van Weel of the centre-right VVD party tried to salvage the bill by adding a humanitarian clause exempting charitable acts. But the amendment was defeated by a single vote, causing the entire legislation to collapse. The PVV ended up voting against its own bill, accusing the government of watering it down. Meanwhile, centrist and religious parties like CDA and SGP withdrew support because the final version lacked explicit protections for aid workers.
In the end, the law failed not because the Senate wanted to be soft on immigration, but because politicians could not agree on where to draw the line between border enforcement and a bowl of soup.
Parallel Toughening: The Two-Status System
On the same day, the Senate approved the Two-Status System Act, which reintroduces a distinction between asylum seekers fleeing persecution (e.g., due to sexual orientation or religion) and those fleeing war or climate change. The former will receive more rights, while the latter will only get limited residency permits and restricted family reunification. This marks a return to a system abolished in the early 2000s.
The Netherlands' independent Advisory Council on Migration has criticised the two-status approach, warning it will not deter migration and will create backlogs. The move comes as EU countries grapple with implementing the bloc's Migration Pact, with Spain recently defending its own mass regularisation as a model for the continent.
The Dutch Senate's decision underscores the complexity of migration politics in Europe: even as governments seek to tighten borders, they must navigate legal frameworks, humanitarian obligations, and the fine line between policy and compassion.
