Hi

I have a question regarding residence permits.
I have been working since 01 April 2009 on a KM visa in the Netherlands. I have a one year employment contract with my employer, and one year residence permit. It seems like they will keep issuing one year contracts for as long as possible (judging by the contracts offered to other expats working there longer than I).

Due to unbearable situation at work I am now considering to accept another position.
The problem is that the employer that I work for pays a salary which is very good and easily matches the minimum level required by KM criteria. The tricky part is that this specific company is unique and other companies in this sector cannot match it.
This means that when I change from employer they will probably not be able to reach the minimum level required by KM criteria.

I now have an option to change to a TWV with the other company. The "plus" is that the new employer will consider offering me a possible permanent contract!

We have a long term stay vision, and thus any type of stability/security would be what we are looking for.

Seen from a stability/security point of view, my question are they following:
1) Is it in our interest to rather hanging onto a KM status with one year contract (and probably one year residence permit extensions) till the employer someday decides to give a permanent contract?

OR

2) Would it be better to change to a TWV and get a permanent contract, and more importantly will the fact that I have a permanent work contract enhance ones chances for obtaining a five year residence permit?

Thank you so much for helping a novice, it is greatly appreciated!

Kind regards
Morne

Hi,

I think I understand your situation .. but I am not sure because it seems like you are mixing terms.

There are several terms and some of them are not related to the others.

Working Permit - I think you mean this when you say TWV
Knowledge Migrant Visa - called KM
Temporary Work Contract
Permanent Work Contract
Residence Permit

I came here on a Working Permit .. back before they had the Knowledge Workers permits but today you can have a company sponsor you based on income level (Knowledge Migrant Permit) or
a company sponsor based on scarce skills (Working Permit).

A. Working Permit: With this option, the company will sponspr you for this permit for a 3 year period.

- At the same time, you have to go to the IND personally and they will give you a Residence Permit for 1 year (based on the fact that you are here for work).

- Every year for 5 years you will have to send your papers in and have this Residence Permit renewed. This is normal.

- Upon your 3rd year renewal of this Residence permit, a stamp will appear on that permit that says TWV NIET VERIEST (sp?) which basically means you no longer need a Working Permit to work here. So you can work for ANY company without getting Working Permit. (I got my stamp after 2 years so you might get lucky!)

- Now this is separate from your Work Contract. When the company hires you, they will give you a temporary work contract that lasts 1 year. But this Work Contract is given to EVERY employee working for a company in The NL so it has nothing to do with your Working Permit to work here!

(Typically everyone gets this Temporary Work Contract for the first year unless you have done some nice negociations and they are willing to give you a Permanentt Work Contract right away).

After that year (if they still want you) they will offer you a Permanant Work Contract.
Now, if the company is tight on funds or is just not sure about you .. they will give you a second 1 year Temporary Work Contract and then perhaps the following year you will get a Permanent Work Contract.

If some time within those 3 years you decide you want to change companies - that company has to get you the exact same Working Permit (same rules as before) or they can get you a KM permit as decribed below.


B. Knowledge Workers Permit: With this option, again the company will sponsor you for this permit - but for a 5 year period

- You don't have to apply for a separate Residence Permit because your Residence Permit is bundled in with this Knowledge Worker permit.

- If you decide to change another company within that 5 years, that new company has to hire you as a Knowledge Worker too .. so the salary etc must fall within the same guidelines as it did with your first company.

So if you quit your first company and go to a second company - it doesn't matter that they are gonna give you a Permanent Work Contract .. you are a NON-EU so you HAVE to get a Knowledge Workers permit FIRST (or a Working Permit as indicated above). Without that - they cannot hire you.

Often companies are unaware of the legalities of hiring a NON-EU and will make promises .. not realizing that you just can work there because you are qualified.

After 5 years of living here (no matter the option and with no breaks) you can apply for a Dutch Permanaent Residence Permit witch doubles as an EU Perm. Residence. That means you can stay here permanently or you can move to another EU country and not have to get a Working permit etc anymore.

So for you .. when you say you have a 1 year Residence Permit .. um that tells me you have a Working Permit and not a KM permit. Maybe people are using the terms interchangably?

It is really important that you are clear on your options BEFORE you quit your current job or else you may end up with NO JOB and have to leave the country.

Do PM me if you want more drtails etc and don't want to share here publicly.

I might be able to clear something up: there is only one thing that is inherently special about having a residence permit as a kennismigrant. All a 'KM permit' is, to start with, is a residence permit for the purpose of working at a specific company, valid for the length of your contract (so yes, it can be valid for less than 5 years); in that sense it's not any different from any other residence permit for the purpose of work. The kennismigrant program is not so much a special status for you as it is a regulation that is there for the convenience of your employer, so that your employer can more quickly and easily import you and legally employ you if they are willing to pay you enough money.

If a new employer wants to apply for a TWV for you (meaning they can't pay you enough money to import you as a KM, but they are willing to go through an extremely arduous application procedure to prove that your skills are very hard to find on the Dutch market so that they can get an "employment permit", which is literally what a TWV is, to be able to legally employ you), and if your new employer gets that TWV, and you want to switch to be able to have a nicer job and more security, even though it's less money, I say go for it! If the employer is granted a TWV based on an indefinite contract, your new residence permit will be granted for 3 years, because if you ride out that three years you can apply for a renewal without your employer having a TWV, i.e. you are then free on the labor market to legally work for that employer or any other employer. Just try to make sure your application is seamless, i.e. don't tell the IND that you quit your old job before your new employer is granted the TWV and you apply for the new residence permit based on that.

The only, only, only reason you might want to stay with a residence permit that you got under the KM regulation is if you have a partner who has a residence permit as your dependent (and I do see that you said "we", I'm not sure if that's what you meant by that). This is the only special thing about a residence permit granted based on the KM regulation compared to a residence permit based on a TWV: the partner of a KM is free to legally work wherever he/she wants, but the partner of the holder of a residence permit based on a TWV is not free to work wherever he/she wants: he/she would either have to earn a KM-level salary or have their employer apply for a TWV for their job.

Jeremy Bierbach, LLM
www.immigrate.nl

You can be a very well paid street sweeper and be a highly skilled migrant

Yes, not long after the KM regulation was introduced, the IND tried to reject the applications of highly-paid janitors, cooks and the like for the KM regulation. The courts overruled the IND in almost every case: they earned enough, and so they qualified! The regulation does specifically exclude sex workers, clergy and professional athletes, but does not otherwise stipulate that the work specifically has to be of an abstract or professional nature.

Personally, I think that such a blunt instrument as salary is a poor gauge of someone's true value to the Dutch economy, and it's encouraging to see that there are now other regulations for bright but not necessarily highly paid migrants (PhD candidates and medical residents for the KM regulation; and a reduced salary requirement for graduates of Dutch and top international universities).

Best Jeremy

Thank you so much for the valuable information, it is very much appreciated!

To answer your question, the “we” involves my wife and me. She still has a KM visa. I suppose you could call this an over kill but, we just want to secure things and rather have two visas in place rather than one.

The thing that just still confuses me is that we have friends who came to the Netherlands as knowledge migrants with permanent contracts from the start (I am aware that this is probably the exception rather than the rule). They however received a five year residence permit granted from the start? Is this also out of the ordinary?

From what you have said, I gather that the term granted with a TWV coupled with an indefinite contract is three years. The current “Verblijfsdocument” card that was issued under the KM and stretches from 12-05-09 until 15-04-10. If we do the seamless transition from KM to TWV (with indefinite contract) does the three year period then start from the date I start at the new company, or on the date I started at the first company?

Last but not the least you have mentioned that it is an “extremely arduous application procedure” to obtain a TWV. More specifically the process of proving that there is nobody in the Dutch labour market that can fill this position. Could you perhaps be so kind as to elaborate about what this arduous process entails, and are there companies that help with this process?

Many thanks!

Kind regards,
Morne

Legally, no, not out of the ordinary at all. The maximum length of validity of any residence permit is 5 years. So if you have a residence permit as a KM based on a permanent contract, it will be valid for 5 years. If you have a residence permit as a KM based on a 1-year contract, it will be valid for 1 year.



Good question. I am of the legal opinion, based on the text of the law, that the three-year period started with your first residence permit for work, but I understand that the IND sees that differently: that they only count the three years that you stayed at one job with a permit for that job, so therefore for them it would begin with the new permit. I'd be glad to try to get you a permit based on my interpretation (applying 3 years after you got your first permit), but it would take at least a year before the case would come before the judge, who would decide what the right interpretation is, so that's not a solution to pursue if you really need a permit that makes you free on the labor market.



It's a process of advertising the job vacancy, including on a website that advertises vacancies all over the EU/EEA, for a period of at least 5 weeks. If the employer rejects everyone who applies for this vacancy, he/she has to give good reasons to the UWV (the government agency that issues TWVs) why he/she rejected each of the applications in favor of you.

Most immigration lawyers can help with the process, but it is rather soul-sucking for the employer whichever way you slice it, having to seriously entertain applications and having to take the risk that he/she may actually find a European who is better qualified than you.