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Response of IND to family reunification after family reunification analysis

Last update: 26 February 2025

On Friday 7 June, it was shared with the House of Representatives that in August 2023, the Immigration and Naturalisation Service had made a first draft analysis of the number of times family reunification after asylum family reunification had taken place in recent years. To be thorough, several internal checks had been made before the statistics were final. For this reason, it took until February before final statistics on family reunification after asylum family reunification (stacked asylum family reunification) were established. 

In the Performance Update (only available in Dutch), which the IND published in May 2023, family reunification after asylum family reunification was mentioned as an undesirable effect of legislation. This was based on signals from the organisation. At that time, it was unknown how often it happened.    

Careful assessment of the statistics

In response to questions about the size of family reunification after asylum family reunification, the IND made a first draft analysis in August 2023. These statistics were then further assessed on the shop floor to verify whether they matched the signals. Technical questions about definitions followed from this and it became clear that several types of stacked Asylum family reunification exist. Based on this information, new supplementary analyses were done, painting a more complete picture. These were again checked internally. 
 
Unfortunately, the IND needed a lot of time for the entire process because of the complexity of the analyses and the limited capacity available, among other reasons. Late December, the analysis was complete. In January 2024, a final update was made to supplement the data of the final months of 2023 based on the established method of measurement. This supplement, and thereby the final analysis, was ready in February and was published on 16 February 2024 (only available in Dutch).