My grandmotherly look has advantages at times. I patted a young guy from enforcement on his beefy arm today. There was not even a split second of protest from him.

In fact, he pulled a minor face and agreed with what I had just said. (I won’t say what that was other than that it concerned homeless workers in Amsterdam.)

He had been called to a begging former migrant worker. He was waiting for the police. I told him to engage an interpreter to find out what is going on with these poor sods.

Many seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place in more ways than one.

They get lured here with offers of work and accommodation and often end up on the streets. (Just like IT workers sometimes get lured to other countries only to have their ID taken and being forced to scam people from behind a desk.)

They’re all using similar signs, or none, and most only speak Romanian. The signs show up out of nowhere. Almost none have their stuff with them. Where do they keep it? Don’t they have anything at all?

I used to think that these were begging gangs. I’ve once seen a higher-up briefly speak with one of them. I can’t make the business model work, however.

Then I figured that they are all abandoned migrant workers just fighting for survival.

Next came the observation of what I was pretty sure was a very brief verbal drugs transaction. No drugs exchanged, just information. (Can I be 100% sure? No.)

Haven’t seen that guy for a while now.

I saw someone else do a very quick sniff of… something. Just someone who was hanging around and curious about me. Not a migrant worker but someone who according to him was born and raised here. I think he said that the city of Amsterdam had gone to court to cut his benefits. (They surely do not need to go to court for that!)

There was also the apparently affluent lad who went out of his way to give me a Snickers bar and asked if I had a home and then, a phone. (Trying to recruit me.)

There’s the angry and frustrated guy who the supermarket people called the police for today. He has left food behind twice. Half a large bag of pretzels one day. An AH cheese snack and an almost entire large bag of almonds from Lidl. I took it. I ate it.

He only speaks and understands Romanian.

There is the young girl with the oh so sweet smile. She only speaks and understands Romanian. She started showing up a few weeks ago. She doesn’t use a sign. Yesterday, she was sitting in front of a trash can. A guy in front of her gave her a drinks can. She did not have a money cup this time so I got her one. I’ve done it before. The guy followed me into AH, to put his can into the machine after my “handful”.

She had a blue AH bag with her. Here’s the kicker. She dumped that bag with food donations in a planter. I know because it contained something I’d given her. I know because I ran into the bag and this is not the kind of thing that I can afford to ignore. So she too is definitely not begging for food.

So what IS she doing?

From another woman, I once got to take the empty cans that someone had given her. So it’s not about the few bits of money that they accumulate either.

Today, shortly after the angry guy presumably was taken away the police, a woman took his place. She spotted me, I noticed, so I couldn’t pay attention. I’m hoping that it was the young Dutch woman who occasionally pops up to beg and not someone arranged quickly by someone who observes and manages these poor people. Or maybe I don’t…

When the city of Amsterdam rejects the request for help, it almost automatically pushes them into criminal activity.

I also talked with a Greek guy, later. He’s from Thessaloniki and worked in London for a few years. He’s trying to get his basic financial benefits transferred from Zaandam (where he had a girlfriend) to Amsterdam. The Netherlands does not work that way. He knows he needs to have an address first, for starters.

(I also spoke with a photographer today who started at Folia and then moved on to NRC, but that’s a different story.)

For record, I had told the begging guy in question to go sit in front of the closed pharmacy, two doors down get out of the hair of the supermarket staff. He didn’t understand me. I don’t understand him either.

He did later say that there was far too much police here.

The frustration with some of these guys is almost palpable.

The guy who I possibly saw exchange drugs-related information told me that people back in Romania ask him to help them come to the Netherlands. “They have NO idea.” He also is adamant that he was much better looked after in England. He was in Oxfordshire following a while.

Here in the Netherlands, these poor sods become really trapped.

So I once again repeat that Mayor Femke Halsema is simply reaping what she and the people around her sow.