Irrational Strictness of Dutch Income Requirements

So, the Dutch government has tried as hard as it can over the last seven years to make it harder to sponsor a partner for family reunification. In order to do so as a non-EU citizen, you must pay at 830 Euro for your partner and more for the kids, and prove that you have 1500 Euro per month income for the next year. This amount if the highest in Europe.

Now, the basics of this policy is that the government is allowed to take measures to protect scarce resources and ensure that sponsors are able to pay for their partners. However, it is not a legitimate pursuit of a public interest to use a income requirement as a means to simply reduce numbers. If this is the case, that means that the government goal is to deny the fundamental right to family integrity and engaging in effective deportation of their own citizens simply for the sake of infringing the right, rather than to pursue a public interest. Simple desire to violate a person's rights is never a sufficient justification.

For young people, this income requirement is increasingly difficult to meet due to the recession and the rise in temporary and non-permanent work. This is important because sponsors are people of marriageable age, thus generally young people. It is also especially difficult for women, who tend to work part-time in The Netherlands. In fact, recent reports show that well over half of cannot meet the requirement, resulting in effective discrimination on the basis of gender, which was the previous conclusion of Human Rights Watch.

The UN and Human Rights Watch has criticized the Dutch government's inflexibility with their income requirement.

I am writing to propose a method of increasing flexibility in the policy without at all sacrificing the legitimate government interest of protecting scarce social resources and ensuring that newcomers will be provided for by the sponsor. I propose that the IND allow multiple persons to be sponsors of one immigrant. 

So basically, when you 'sponsor' someone, you are legally obliged to pay for them. This means that if they apply for welfare, the government is legally allowed to sue the sponsor to re-coup any money paid to the immigrant. Also, even if there is a break-up, the sponsor is still obliged to pay for the immigrant's expenses. What my proposal would do is make it so that multiple people could use their incomes to meet the 1500 Euro amount. For example, the sponsoring partner herself, and, for example, one or both of the sponsor's parents could be sponsors and use multiple incomes to meet the 1500 Euro amount.

Currently, this is allowed in the US. The US government likes it quite a bit because the US realizes that using multiple sponsors actually increases their ability to ensure that the immigrant is provided for. They have multiple people to go after in the event that the sponsor seeks social assistance (here, I would like to add that a new immigrant seeking social assistance is extremely, extremely rare because both in NL and US, despite widespread ignorance to the contrary, because they are not entitled to social assistance until after a long time of working and the immigrant knows this and that it could jeopardize their immigrant status). In civil law, this is known as joint and several liability, and is always good for the person seeking recovery of their money.

Second, I would also like to re-assert my proposal that the IND count student financing grants/loans as income. They count other subsidies like old-age pension. Three years of a government subsidy is as stable, if not moreso, than employment these days.