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National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie

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who have been in the Netherlands illegally for quite some time. Not everyone<br />

is therefore in transit. How or why people ended up here, however, is usually<br />

unclear. An unknown number used the services of smugglers.<br />

The fact that potential illegal migrants themselves choose to use the services<br />

of a human smuggler does not mean that there are never cases of victimisation.<br />

During the journey, for example, a smuggler may take too many risks, which<br />

leads to dangerous situations for the people being smuggled. This may result<br />

in physical injury or even death. In addition, anybody who invests a lot in a<br />

smuggling journey and is close to his destination after several weeks will not<br />

easily give up. As a result, this person is now in a position of dependency and<br />

will be more inclined to agree to dangerous smuggling methods.<br />

2.7.3 Scale<br />

Smuggling of illegal immigrants constitutes an illegal services market. We will<br />

discuss its scale based on both the people who purchase the illegal services and<br />

the people who offer those services, i.e. the smuggled people and the<br />

smugglers.<br />

Smuggled immigrants<br />

There is no reliable record of the number of smuggled immigrants who are<br />

intercepted. However, in any attempt to still say something about the number<br />

of illegal immigrants smuggled to the Netherlands, the usual method is to<br />

analyse the figures for requests for asylum. It is then assumed that some of the<br />

asylum seekers managed to reach the Netherlands by using the services of<br />

smugglers.<br />

Table 3<br />

Total influx of asylum seekers, 2000-2007<br />

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007<br />

43,895 32,579 18,667 13,402 9,782 12,347 14,465 9,750<br />

Source: Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst (IND) (the bureau of immigration<br />

and naturalisation)<br />

Up to 2004 the influx of asylum seekers fell considerably, before rising slightly<br />

and then falling once again in 2007. Estimates vary of the number of people<br />

who received assistance from a third party for their journey to the Netherlands,<br />

paid a travel free and entered the Netherlands illegally. Around 2004 this was<br />

76 <strong>National</strong> <strong>Threat</strong> <strong>Assessment</strong> 2008 – <strong>Organised</strong> crime

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