# A year in the Netherlands



## Carolinephoto (Jan 16, 2014)

My husband and I are hoping to move to the Netherlands for the year of 2015 - we want to learn the language and enjoy living abroad before we decide to have kids, my grandparents are also from there. We own a photography busy in the states and are American citizens. It seems to be a huge pain to get a self-employment visa. We've heard of people moving over and filtering everything through their U.S. company and wanted to see if that is a viable option for us. 

Thank you for any help!


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## Bevdeforges (Nov 16, 2007)

Be very, very careful. The Netherlands can be a tricky place for getting a residence visa - as they are trying to limit immigration. The issue with a "self-employment" visa is that in much of Europe, all forms of employment must include some form of registration with the local social insurances, which include health insurance, family allocation and retirement. 

If you really are only going to be over in the Netherlands for one year, you may do better to go for a "visitor" visa for a year. Not sure of the details for the Netherlands, but normally this means you have to have the resources available to support yourselves for the full year and you may have to provide evidence of private health insurance that covers roughly the same as the national insurance plan does. It is sometimes possible to use your US company employment as proof of your "resources" - provided that you can assure the consulate that you will be moving back at the end of the year and that isn't a sneaky way of trying to become more permanent residents.
Cheers,
Bev


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## Carolinephoto (Jan 16, 2014)

At this point I'm leaning towards just spending summers there. We have a house in Austin that we have every intention of coming back to and associate photographer that will still be bringing in money while we would be gone as well as deposits for the following year. I'm just not sure it's all worth the effort at this point as much as we would like to do the full experience of a year.... 
Thank you for the advice.


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