Hi there
I'm hoping that someone on this forum will be able to help us get an idea of the "work flow" involved in moving from SA (Cape Town) to Utrecht in our particular context?! Here are some salient details:
- I have a Dutch passport and live in South Africa
- My husband has a South African passport and live in South Africa
- Our three children of 16, 14 and 10 all have Dutch passports
- I am a senior business analyst and speak fairly good Dutch (ik heb in 1993 in Nederland gewoond, en heb ook familie in Nederland)
- my husband used to be in IT and has owned and been the director a cable manufacturing company for 11 years; he speaks good Afrikaans and picks up languages pretty well
- We have visited the Netherlands a number of times and have family in Amsterdam and Meppel
- We'd like to be able to get to the Netherlands by early July 2019
- We are visualising probably trying to rent a furnished apartment to start with, and then to eventually buy once we've settled down
I am aware of the fact that there is a LOT of paperwork for us to get from Home Affairs (unabridged birth certificates for Alistair and our three children, as well as an unabridged marriage certificate). A scary prospect on its own! These then need to be apostille'd and be less than six months old (which is why our existing paperwork is regarded as obsolete, I assume). I also gather that Alistair will need to get a long-stay visa and MVV, and possibly also do a civic integration examination. And I will need to be able to prove that I have a contract of at least 12 months offered to me.
This is where things start getting hazy for us, and we're not sure:
(a) exactly what the process is,
(b) which steps can be done in parallel, and
(c) how long we can expect the whole process to take?
I gather there is an application form to complete, but am not sure at what point this can / should be done? Is there anything that I need to apply for myself? Do the children need to apply for residence permits / visas?
I also have no idea at what point we should be trying to find a place for our children at schools in Utrecht, if we're hoping for them to start school in September 2019? We still also need to make a call as to whether we just go the easy (but expensive) route of putting them into international schools, or if we perhaps just also enroll them at a "taal school" in Utrecht. I have been in touch with a company in the Netherlands who've indicated I shouldn't have too much trouble finding a job, so I am wondering, too, when it would be good to be putting my name forward for roles.
Any ideas and advice will be welcome!