A total of 675 children and 775 of their family members have been given Dutch residency permits under the government’s amnesty for young refugees, according to new immigration service figures.

The figures, due to be published later on Monday, are in the hands of newspaper Trouw.

Junior justice minister Fred Teeven told MPs in October that 3,260 applications for the amnesty have been made on behalf of children and their family members and 1,800 have been refused.

Of those, 1,330 cases have now gone to appeal. Teeven said at the time the amnesty was launched he expected it would apply to 800 children.

Five years

According to Trouw, most of the appeals have been dealt with and amnesty is ‘as good as completed’. However, some cases are still likely to go to appeal, the paper says.

To qualify for the amnesty, children should have lived in the Netherlands for at least five years and not been out of contact with the Dutch authorities for more than three months. They must also be under the age of 21 and have lied about their identity to officials no more than once.

The amnesty for child refugees formed part of the coalition agreement between the VVD and Labour party in 2012.

School

Most of the children whose request for residency has been refused could not prove they had lived in the Netherlands for more than five years.

This means, for example, that children who were under local authority supervision and were not living in an official government refugee centre, are not covered, even if they can prove they attended school.

Dutch lawyers who work with asylum seekers say the number of approved application is ‘depressingly low’. They say the rules have been extremely strictly applied not to include children who were living in local council accommodation.