Hundreds of thousands of labor migrants in the Netherlands remain unregistered in the national population registry, leaving them highly vuln
Hundreds of thousands of labor migrants in the Netherlands remain unregistered in the national population registry, leaving them highly vulnerable, according to a new investigation by the trade union FNV. Reports show that employment agencies sometimes actively discourage registration or even terminate workers who attempt to register. FNV found that some agencies withhold information about registration in the Basisregistratie Personen (BRP), the national population database, allowing them to house large numbers of migrant workers in a single residence without the legal protections that registration provides. Currently, an estimated one million labor migrants live in the Netherlands, with hundreds of thousands unregistered. Those without registration are harder to trace, more susceptible to exploitative housing, and often face eviction when losing employment. Studies suggest that three out of five homeless people in the country are labor migrants. “We have seen cases where a Polish man who had worked in the Netherlands for sixteen years faced eviction from his home while undergoing daily morphine treatment for cancer, simply because he was not registered,” Aik van den Boogaard, FNV labor migration consultant, told NRC. “He could easily lose his housing because he had not built up rental rights.” Organizations such as FairWork, which supports victims of labor exploitation, and the Salvation Army confirm FNV’s findings. FairWork social worker Alina Bejan told the newspaper, “I recently saw a rental contract where an appendix explicitly stated, ‘Tenants are not allowed to register in BRP.’”
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