{"id":132487,"date":"2024-03-04T07:52:22","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T07:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dispatcheseurope.com\/?p=132487"},"modified":"2024-03-06T09:05:04","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T09:05:04","slug":"rachel-arts-on-becoming-a-citizen-of-the-netherlands-pt-1-benefits-and-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dispatcheseurope.com\/rachel-arts-on-becoming-a-citizen-of-the-netherlands-pt-1-benefits-and-options\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Arts on becoming a citizen of the Netherlands, Pt. 1: Benefits and options"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Editor\u2019s note:\u00a0<\/strong>This is Pt. 1 of a two-part series about becoming a naturalized citizen of the Netherlands. You can jump to\u00a0Pt. 2 here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four years ago, my son and I moved to the Netherlands from the United Kingdom after I married a Dutch gentleman. This was the year before Brexit,<\/a> with Great Britain leaving the European Union, and all the freedom of being part of the European Union and being able to live and work in the various member countries being removed. As someone who gets nervous about bureaucracy and red tape, I wanted the minimum complications as I moved into getting married and moving to the Netherlands, so we planned a “pre-Brexit” wedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I had married a Dutch man, my son (a minor) and I were granted residency permits under the withdrawal agreement<\/a>, meaning that we would be granted Dutch residency for a period of five years. For traditional expats, you have to live in your new country for five years before you can apply for citizenship, but marrying a Dutch person gives you an exemption <\/a>and you can apply sooner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those that don\u2019t want to apply for citizenship, you can simply keep renewing your residency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without our Dutch residency permit we would be beholden to the rule that now applies to all Brits abroad \u2013 a standard visit from the UK to the Netherlands has to be less than three months in duration. The reverse of this applies to Dutch people now travelling to the UK in a post-Brexit world, three-month visits are allowed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On our travels between the Netherlands and the UK, if we failed to show our residency permit at the border crossing, our passports would be routinely stamped so that they could track the date we had arrived or left. A couple of times I was able to show a picture of my residency permit if I had left it behind, and immigration officials were okay with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once my son and I had acclimatised in the Netherlands (and survived the various pandemic lockdowns), we researched the process for securing our Dutch passports and becoming properly “Dutch.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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