He was born in the Netherlands and has never been to Armenia: yet it is to this country that Mikael Matosyan, 11, is due to be deported, along with his mother, before the end of August. The young boy, who lives in Amsterdam and goes to school there, has become the symbol of the austerity policy that Marjolein Faber, the new Minister for Asylum and Migration, wants to implement. A member of the Party for Freedom (PVV), Geert Wilders' party, Mme Faber is to put the far-right party's stamp on the coalition led by former senior civil servant Dick Schoof. Schoof took over at the beginning of July a coalition that includes the PVV, the liberal party, the centrist New Social Contract and the agrarian party Farmer-Citizen Movement.
Seven opposition parties have mobilised, so far in vain, to ask Mrme Faber to allow young Mikael to remain in the Netherlands, where his mother gave birth to him. After a very long legal battle, she was not granted the right to asylum in the kingdom, the Council of State having definitively refused it on July 31. The mother and child must therefore be expelled. The minister, faced with a mobilization of part of the public, is under pressure but believes that she is not competent to intervene, only the director of the Ministry of Immigration being, according to her, concerned. Several lawyers dispute this point of view and refer to previous episodes which saw children and adolescents born in the country receive a residence permit after a ministerial intervention, their situation being officially judged “poignant”.
Mikael has lived with his mother in an asylum centre for five years, where he was awaiting a successful outcome to a residence application filed after the authorities abandoned a general measure known as “pardon” for children born in the country or who had been there for a long time and were well integrated. The judges found that Gohar Matosyan, the boy’s mother, had in fact evaded the authorities’ control for too long. However, they stressed that her son was at risk of being plunged “in stress and uncertainty” finding himself in a country he doesn't know at all.
Various associations, including Defence for Children and Big Friends, defend this point of view, as does the Green mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, who considers that the decision of the Council of State is “cruel”. “ It is very severe but in line with the political will to limit migration.”underlines Karen Geertsema, professor of migration law at the University of Nijmegen.
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Source: Lemonde
