“People are coming in the first instance for information before they submit a dossier,” said Antwerp’s alderwoman for social policy, Monica De Coninck. “In any case they have three months to do so.” In Antwerp, only six applications had been handed by noon on the first day, but 300 or so people had come by to pick up a form to be filled in later, and others had called in with questions. In Ghent, 40 applications were submitted, and 100 people came in for information.

The new measures concern migrants who have lived in Belgium continuously for five years, or who lived here legally before 18 March 2008, or who have been here continuously since March 2007 and have a work contract. The regularisation also covers asylum seekers whose procedure has already lasted longer than “a reasonable time” – a term which is not strictly defined.

In the event, there turned out to be fewer applicants for regularisation in Antwerp than the number of Vlaams Belang (VB) supporters there to protest against the “floods” of new immigrants the measure would encourage.

According to critics of the measure, it will indirectly attract others to come and live here illegally, in expectation of the next wave of regularisation. “Instead of bringing more people here, prime minister Herman Van Rompuy would do better to work on the enormous waiting lists of our own people needing help,” commented VB parliamentary leader Filip De Winter.

The VB estimates there were 150,000 regularisations between 2001 and 2008. “The tomtoms are rumbling today in Africa and elsewhere, and bags are being packed for Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels,” De Winter said.

The government expects the measure to affect between 50,000 and 80,000 people. An alleged top civil servant in the Foreigners’ Office, speaking anonymously in Het Laatste Nieuws, called the government’s estimate “laughably low,” and placed the true figure closer to 350,000. “What nobody seems to realise is that there is more than one person behind each dossier,” the man said. “And that after regularisation there will be follow-up immigration of family members”. The true figure is likely to be a multiple of the number estimated by the government, he said.