Multiple African and Middle Eastern women are using complete strangers with Dutch citizenship to fraudulently obtain residency permit, according to the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND).
The IND warns it is essentially powerless to stop this widespread fraud, including egregious cases, such as a man identified as Surinamese-Dutch man who has been linked to 47 applications to claim paternity for foreign children. Another Surinamese-Dutch man has recognized 25 babies born to 17 different women, each of whom subsequently applied for a residency permit on that basis.
In fact, the fraud is extremely widespread, with the top offenders from Morocco, Turkey, Ghana, Nigeria and Suriname. Over recent years, the IND has logged 400 reports of suspected fraud involving child recognition, submitted by municipalities, embassies, or uncovered through its own casework. Requests for residency permits based on having a child with a Dutch national have been rising steadily, now exceeding 3,000 cases per year.
The applicants know the loopholes and they know the courts are on their side. Whenever a Dutch national recognizes a child in a foreign country as his own, they automatically obtain residency rights. The IND has identified a network of so-called “sham parents” who allegedly offer themselves for registration as the legal father or mother of a foreign child — in exchange for payment.
A single EU court ruling opened the floodgates
The practice surged following a 2017 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union. At the time, an undocumented Venezuelan mother was ruled to have the right to remain in the Netherlands because she had a child with a Dutch father. The impact of that judgment has been enormous on the Netherlands and its social welfare system.
Since then, foreigners whose child has been recognized by a Dutch national have been effectively guaranteed residency. Crucially, the recognizing party does not even need to be the biological parent. The rules also apply to stepparents, foster parents and guardians.
Since the 2017 ruling, more than 17,500 such applications have been submitted and nearly all have been approved, according to IND figures.
The Dutch Association for Civil Affairs (NVVB) urged registry officials to be on the lookout for such fraud, including warning signs like “a striking age gap between the alleged parents,” according to Dutch news outlet NRC. They instructed officials to refuse the application if questions arose,, but a serious problem arose. The courts were ruling in favor of the suspected fraudsters in every instance.
NRC points to a case from 2020, where a Ghanese man without residency papers sought to recognize a child with a Dutch woman. The man and woman gave contradictory statements about their supposed relationship and refused a DNA test. The Amsterdam registry official suspected a sham arrangement, but the court ordered authorities proceed with the recognition regardless, because it could not be proven that the man’s sole motivation was the residency permit.
Eric Gubbels, chair of the NVVB’s Personal Registration committee, says the pattern repeated itself across virtually every case of this kind to reach the courts.
“The burden of proof, according to the court, lies entirely with the municipality. It must demonstrate that the person recognizing the child is after a residency permit. And in practice, that almost never succeeds,” he said.
As a result of the string of lost legal battles, the NVVB no longer actively works to obstruct questionable child recognitions, Gubbels says. Registry officials are no longer encouraged to block suspected sham recognitions. “Because it quite simply serves little purpose.”
Abuse is rampant
The system is, in effect, wide open to exploitation. Once a recognition has passed through the civil registry, the child automatically becomes Dutch — and on that basis, the other parent can claim residency.
This pattern is not only seen in the Netherlands, either. In Germany, extreme cases, including the infamous case of Mr. Cash Money, have made national headlines. The man claimed to be the father of 24 children in the city of Dortmund, which also suffered from similar frauds committed by other African men as well.
In Austria, nearly all social welfare fraud cases are committed by foreigners.
In the Netherlands, a portion of those applications can be traced back to a network of sham fathers, according to a confidential IND report seen by NRC.
A central figure is a Surinamese-Dutch artist from Rotterdam, who the report suggests may be running a trade in child recognitions. Despite his many court appearances over the years, he consistently appears in Rotterdam’s civil registration desk with a succession of different women. Sometimes, less than a month passes before he returns to recognize yet another baby. Although the women are formally listed as the applicants, the handwriting on the forms is identical across all the cases, and authorities believe it is his.
The applications contain the same recurring phrases, showing a lack of concern from the man that he will face any legal consequences. Among the terms being used, he frequently writes: “Without me in her/his/their life, it will become very difficult and unworkable.”
Roughly a year after each recognition, the mother files for a residency permit, which the IND cannot legally reject.
Through his handwriting on forms and his own recognition filings, the man has been connected to 47 Surinamese applicants in total. The IND suspects he carries out the recognitions for “financial gain” and believes he plays “an important role” in a broader network of sham parents, based on his contacts with men in other cities who also have numerous recognitions registered in their name.
Children left stranded
The NVVB warns that children themselves stand to lose out.
“They are saddled with a legal parent who will never play any role in their life,” says Gubbels.
The IND also cites other cases where even homeless men have been directly approached to participate in such schemes. One confidential report describes a 76-year-old man with brain damage who attempted to recognize a one-year-old child. He claimed to have fathered the child in Cameroon, but had never set foot in the country. He had only had online contact with the mother.
Other countries have confronted this crisis.
NDR cites Belgium, which made the recognition of a child for the purpose of obtaining residency papers a criminal offense in 2018. The NVVB hopes the Netherlands will follow with new legislation to combat this crime.
