The step-by-step plan for United States

The honest story first: for many people there's no route to America. That's better to know now than after a year of searching. America has no points system like 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 that you invest in. That's the Dutch route, see the next step.
• Extraordinary ability in your field.
• Immediate family with an American passport.
• Luck in the annual Green Card lottery.

Clear up one stubborn misunderstanding straight away: ESTA is not an emigration route. With ESTA you enter through the Visa Waiver Program, the scheme that lets Dutch citizens into the country without a visa. That is allowed for at most ninety days, and only for business or tourism.

The embassy explicitly adds: whoever wants to stay longer, or comes as an employee, a transferee or an investor, needs a real visa. Arriving on ESTA and sorting it out there afterwards simply doesn't exist.

As a Dutch citizen you have a door most nationalities don't have: the E-2 visa. That's the visa for whoever invests a substantial amount in a real American business and will run that business themselves. You need no employer for it, no lottery and no queue.

That door exists thanks to a treaty of friendship and commerce with the United States, in force since 5 December 1957. Because of it, the Netherlands is on the list of treaty countries for the E-2 visa.

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: the cheaper the enterprise, the higher the share you have to put in yourself.
• The business may not be marginal. It has to be able to yield more than just a minimal income for you and your family.

Know too that this visa is emphatically temporary. You may renew it 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. If you expect a green card, a permanent visa, via this route, you're looking at the wrong track.

In this step you see what the move is going to cost you. America is one of the most expensive destinations, and it helps to know where that money goes. Not into the move itself: that's comparable to Australia. It goes into two items that exist nowhere else:

• The issuance fee on the E visa. That's an amount the United States charges per nationality. For Dutch citizens it runs into thousands per person.
• Health insurance. You pay for it entirely yourself. There's no public system, and there's no treaty route that brings your healthcare along from the Netherlands.

Work both out before you take a decision. Count the car too: you sell it here and have to buy one again there.

With this step you decide together whether it will be America, and on what conditions. America attracts for good reasons: space, pace, and a labour market that rewards daring. Discuss the other side too, with real numbers.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you leave behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Agree on three evenings, a week apart:

• Evening 1, why. What do we hope to find in America? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What has to be in place for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to go back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4.

On the second evening, take these four points along too:

• Healthcare and work. Your healthcare in many cases hangs on your job. That makes dismissal heavier there than here.
• Holidays and leave. Holidays and maternity leave aren't legally arranged as in the Netherlands.
• The distance. Family is an eight-hour flight away, and the time difference makes calling awkward.
• A temporary visa. 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 on your residence status starts running right away.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers for the visa, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Whoever lives in America and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually no longer builds up AOW, the Dutch state pension. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. You can insure yourself voluntarily with the SVB. You have one year for that, counted from the moment you're no longer insured. Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on large expenses. If your partner is coming along without a job of their own, your plan has a separate step about it.

Married, registered or living together? That can make a difference for your partner's residence permit, for co-insurance in healthcare and for inheritance. With the L-1 and the E-2, only your husband or wife and your unmarried children under 21 come along as family members. A partner you only live with isn't on that list. Check at the visa further on in your plan what applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four. Tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed routines, such as the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school. Tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, such as their room.
• Teenagers. Involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs the most. Agree how they keep in touch and when they'll see their friends again.

How American school works, and what you arrange per state, is in the article about school with this step.

Who learns the language, and when? You probably speak English already. But a rental contract, a conversation with the doctor or a parents' evening is something else than a holiday. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and that's exactly the one without colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

Whoever has that conversation now doesn't have to have it under pressure later.

On an employer route the accompanying partner is a side issue in the visa story. The partner gets a derivative status: a residence status that depends on the employee's, and that the employer "brings along".

In the Dutch administration that same partner is a full emigrant, with a file of their own. Usually it's even the bigger file of the two:

• There's no employer arranging insurance.
• There's no salary building a pension.
• And yet the same deregistration, the same end of health insurance and the same AOW gap apply (AOW is the Dutch state pension, and each year away means less of it).

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 and free travel.
• The other is about the Dutch side, which 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?
• 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.