Bringing specialised personnel to the Netherlands has become increasingly difficult with employers facing stricter rules and time-consuming procedures. But there's hope of change, thanks to a new Dutch government policy to attract specialised knowledge to the country.

The Netherlands has embraced the pledge by the European Council of Ministers in Barcelona and Lisbon to make the EU the most dynamic knowledge economy in the world by 2010.

The Dutch government has therefore put proposals for attracting a particular type of foreign worker — knowledge migrants — to the country near the top of the political agenda.

Dutch Immigration Minister, Rita Verdonk, has presented a plan to the Parliament with specific measures to facilitate access to the Dutch labour market for knowledge migrants.

Definition of a knowledge migrant

A knowledge migrant is a migrant working as an employee in the Netherlands with a gross annual salary of at least EUR 45,000.

Exceptions

Deviation from the salary requirement is to be allowed in certain cases:

• Migrants aged under 30 will also be considered knowledge migrants provided they have an annual salary of approximately EUR 32,600.
• Furthermore an exception on the salary criteria of EUR 32,600 will be made for PhD students and for postgraduate and university professors aged under 30.

Football players, spiritual leaders and clerics are excluded from the knowledge migrant category.

Proposed measures

To facilitate the access of knowledge migrants to the Dutch labour market, the government has proposed the following measures.

• The obligation for the employer to apply for a work permit on behalf of the knowledge migrant disappears. The employer will have to apply only for a residence permit at the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND). This means that the employer will only have to deal with one desk and one procedure and that the employee will be granted one permit.
• The residence permit will be granted for a maximum validity of five years under the "knowledge migrant" restriction.
• Together with the application for a residence permit for the employee, the employer will have to sign an agreement with the Dutch government, in which he commits himself to take care of the whole application procedure, to inform the Government of any relevant changes in his relation with its employee and to take full responsibility for the employee.
• At the same time the Dutch government commits itself to process the application and make a decision within two weeks.
• In order to accelerate the MVV procedure, a passport will be sufficient to determine the identity of the knowledge migrant and his family. The necessity to legalise a birth and a marriage certificate to prove the family relationship remains, however. Furthermore, the verification procedure applicable to nationals of the Dominican Republic, Ghana, India, Pakistan or Nigeria will only be required — if necessary — after arrival in the Netherlands.
• Special governmental fees of EUR 424 have been established for the application procedure for a knowledge migrant. The fees for the accompanying partner vary from EUR 64 to EUR 985, depending on whether the partner travels together with the knowledge migrant or comes later. The fee for children in both cases is EUR 364.

Conclusion

An approval of the governmental proposal by the Parliament would mean a dramatic change in the immigration procedure applicable to non-EU/EEA/Swiss knowledge migrants.

The role of the Dutch labour office would disappear for this specific category and it will be left up to the IND to decide upon the entrance of knowledge migrant workers to the Dutch labour market. Salary would in the main be the determining factor for entry to the labour market.

It is hoped that the procedure will be faster and will increase the investment in the Netherlands. However, the question is whether the IND has the capacity to take over this new function given the current backlog in regular immigration issues.

Discussions are now going on in The Dutch parliament and we will keep you posted of any changes.

August 2004

Anne Kwint-Bijleveld and Mireya Serra-Janer are immigration specialists within Ernst & Young, Human Capital, Amsterdam (www.ey.nl).