Earlier this week the Belgian Consulate in Turkey opened an investigation into suspected fraud regarding the acquisition of permits allowing Turks to come and live and work in Belgium. Now the Belgian Consulate in Morocco has followed suit. A total of 80 cases of suspected work permit fraud involving Moroccans are being investigated. The permits that had been issued to Moroccans to come and work in Flanders have now been suspended.
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80 residency & work permits granted to Moroccan nations suspended due to suspected fraud
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The news was confirmed by the Federal Secretary of State responsible for asylum and migration Nicole de Moor (Flemish Christian democrat) in an interview with VRT Radio 1’s morning news and current affairs programme ‘De ochtend’.
"The Flemish authorities will look again at the cases of a total of 800 Turks and Moroccans”, Ms de Moor said.
Earlier this week it emerged that the Belgian Consulate in Turkey had suspended around 700 residency permits that had been issued to people that had wanted to come and work in Flanders due to suspected fraud. Now it has emerged that visas issued to around 80 Moroccan nationals have also been put on hold.
"The Flemish authorities will look again at 800 requests made for a combined work and residency permit in Belgium”, Ms de Moor told the VRT.
Since 2019 Belgian employers have the the so-called “combined permit” been able to recruit staff from outside the EU to fill posts in professions where there are labour shortages. Resonsibilty for issuing the permits resides with the regions, in this case Flanders.
"The combined permit is an important legal migration channel. We cannot tolerate any abuse of it”, Ms de Moor told the VRT.
The suspected permit fraud in Turkey and Morocco has given rise to fears that the residency and work permit system may be being abused to bring people to Belgium that have no right to be here to work in jobs that don’t exist. The Flemish socialist federal MP Ben Segers says that permit request have been made for jobs that don’t exist by companies that either don’t exist or that are very small and suddenly say that they want to recruit a lot of additional staff.
Suspiciously big increase
In 2022 a total of 15,199 requests for combined permits were made. 3,055 of these came from Turkey. This was a huge increase on the 1,121 requests that came from Turkey in 2021. In 2020 there were 723 requests for combined visas from people in Turkey. In 2019 this was 815.
Mr Segers told VRT News that such a sudden sharp increase should set the alarm bells ringing at the relevant authorities. “Why this was not the case with the Flemish Employment Minister Jo Brouns (Christian democrat) is a mystery. The Flemish authorities have now been saved thanks to the alertness of federal consular services that have raised the alarm after a suspicious flood of applications”.
Mr Segers added that it is up to the Flemish authorities to carry out checks on the applications that are in fact made here by employers wishing to recruit outside the EU. The MP claimed that failure to carry out effective checks is tantamount to facilitate people smuggling”.