The step-by-step plan for United States

This is the most honest page of this route: for many people there's no route to America, and that's better to know now than after a year of searching. There's no points system like in Australia and no free movement like in Europe. What there is, is a handful of specific keys: an American employer who sponsors you, a business of your own you invest in (the Dutch route, see the next step), extraordinary ability in your field, immediate family with an American passport, or luck in the annual Green Card lottery.

First clear up one stubborn misunderstanding: ESTA is not an emigration route. The Visa Waiver Program admits Dutch citizens for at most ninety days for business or tourism, and the embassy explicitly adds that whoever wants to stay longer or comes as an employee, transferee or investor needs a real visa. Arriving on ESTA and "sorting it out there" doesn't exist.

Dutch citizens have a door most nationalities don't have. Since 5 December 1957 a treaty of friendship and commerce with the United States has been in force, and because of that the Netherlands is on the list of treaty countries for the E-2 visa: the visa for whoever invests a substantial amount in a real American business and will run that business themselves. No employer needed, no lottery, no queue.

Two things to get right straight away. There is no fixed minimum amount: the consulate in Amsterdam says literally that there's no amount that counts as "substantial" — it's about the proportion to what the business costs, and the cheaper the enterprise, the higher the share you have to put in yourself. And the business may not be marginal: it has to be able to yield more than just a minimal income for you and your family.

The second: this visa is emphatically temporary. You may renew without limit as long as the business runs, but you have to demonstrably keep the intention to leave when your status ends — the consulate even asks for a signed declaration about that. Whoever expects a green card via this route is looking at the wrong track.

The most expensive route of the eight, and it's good to know where that money is. Not in the move — that's comparable to Australia. It's in two items that exist nowhere else: the issuance fee on the E visa for Dutch citizens, which runs into thousands per person, and health insurance you pay for entirely yourself because there's no public system and no treaty route. Work both out before you take a decision, and count the car you sell here and have to buy again there.

America attracts for good reasons: space, pace, and a labour market that rewards daring. Discuss the other side too, with real numbers. Your healthcare in many cases hangs on your job — that makes dismissal heavier there than here. Holidays and maternity leave aren't legally arranged as in the Netherlands. The distance to family is an eight-hour flight and a time difference that makes calling awkward. And if you're going on a temporary visa: discuss beforehand what you'll do if the business doesn't run or the job falls away, because then the clock of your status counts right away. Whoever has that conversation now doesn't have to have it under pressure later.

On an employer route the accompanying partner is a subordinate clause in the visa story — a derivative status the employer "brings along". In the Dutch administration that same partner is a full emigrant with a file of their own, and usually the bigger of the two: no employer arranging insurance, no salary building a pension, and yet the same deregistration, the same end of health insurance and the same AOW gap (the Dutch state pension).

Before anything is signed, read the two articles with this step. One is about what the derivative American status gives you — residence, the right to work, free travel — and the other about the Dutch side that applies to every accompanying partner. Take three questions from them to your partner's employer: am I co-insured on the health plan, from which day, and what does the family part cost? Those answers set the budget of the whole first year.

Choose below the date on which you want to be in America. The step-by-step plan works out whether that's feasible with what still has to happen — and says so honestly if it gets tight. In this route your route sets the pace: an E-2 file you build up in months, and on an employer route the employer's clock runs, not yours. A target date is yours: you can always move it, and moving it is a perfectly fine outcome.