The step-by-step plan for Aruba

With this step you know what applies to you when you move to Aruba. It's different from what many people think.

Aruba has been an autonomous country within the Kingdom since 1986. It regulates its own admission, also of Dutch citizens. This is the big difference from Curaçao, and almost every website gets it wrong.

A European Dutch citizen without an Aruban tie gets no declaration by operation of law on arrival here: the proof that you may stay without a permit. You simply need a permit for the first five years. That's a permit for temporary residence, one year at a time.

This is what the staircase looks like:

• For the first five years you need a permit.
• After five years of admission comes admission by operation of law.
• After ten years you fall outside the admission law altogether.

Two things make it lighter. Dutch citizens pay no deposit (a security with the permit). And for the Dutch authorities this is otherwise an ordinary emigration: your health insurance stops, your allowances stop and your AOW accrual (the Dutch state pension) stops.

With this step you choose how you'll earn your income on Aruba: in employment, as an entrepreneur, or from your pension or assets (private means). Each route has its own counter.

• Employment. Your employer lodges the permit application for you, with permission to perform work. That permission is tied to that one position with that one employer.
• The labour market test. With employment, the government checks whether the job can't be done by someone on the island. With an hbo or university degree you skip that test. Others are tested once, but take precedence over non-Dutch nationals.
• Business. Besides your residence permit you need an establishment licence from DEZHI, the economic department. Without that licence running a business is prohibited.
• Private means or retired. This is a residence purpose of its own, with serious income thresholds. As an exception you may await the decision on the island.

The labour market runs almost entirely on tourism. Whoever works outside it looks mainly at healthcare, education and the public sector.

With this step you find out whether everyday life on Aruba suits you. Holiday Aruba and living-there Aruba are two different islands.

So go and live there on trial:

• Stay a few weeks, outside the high season.
• Stay in an ordinary neighbourhood.
• Do your shopping in an ordinary supermarket. Everything comes by boat, and you see that in the price.
• Watch the electricity bill of an air-conditioned home. It surprises everyone.

As a Dutch citizen you can stay as a tourist for up to 180 consecutive days. The standard is 30 days, but extending is possible. So a long trial period is legal and sensible here.

One thing such a trial is not: settling. You may not work during it. And "One Happy Workation" is a tourist programme, not a way to come and live there.

Look honestly too at what the island doesn't have: the anonymity, the choice and the seasons of the Netherlands. Everything happens on 180 square kilometres.

With this step you see what the move is going to cost you, and where the money really goes.

The paperwork here costs hundreds of florins (Afl., the Aruban currency). The biggest item is the work permit fee: Afl. 1,200.

The real money is somewhere else:

• In the sea container with your belongings.
• In the first months on an island where almost everything is imported.

And don't count yourself rich on a quick job. The minimum wage is about Afl. 2,000 a month and wages are structurally below the Dutch level. The supermarket is actually dearer.

The calculator lines up the amounts for your situation. Do that before the family conversation, not after.

With this step you decide together whether Aruba is the right choice. There are no forms involved, and yet most journeys fail here.

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 on Aruba? 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 those evenings, discuss these points at least:

• The distance. This is the heavy point. It's a nine-hour flight, and family visits less often than everyone promises at the farewell.
• Your partner's work. Your partner needs a permit of their own, with permission to work. The jobs are mainly in tourism.
• A plan if it disappoints. Agree what you'll do if the island feels too small after a year. That conversation is cheaper before departure than after.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers for the permit, 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? Even within the Kingdom, the SVB counts Aruba as living outside the Netherlands. So whoever lives on Aruba 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.

Married, registered or living together? That can make a difference for your partner's residence permit, for co-insurance in healthcare and for inheritance. On Aruba a spouse or registered partner gets a permit as a family member. If you're neither, your partner can only come along as a lasting partner. For that, everything below has to be true:

• You are both unmarried.
• One of you is a Dutch national born on Aruba, or naturalised as a Dutch national there, or is a knowledge migrant (an employee in a category that the Aruban ministries designate as knowledge migrant).
• You have a notarial cohabitation agreement.
• You have had a relationship exclusively with each other for at least three years.

If you are both Dutch nationals from outside Aruba and neither of you is a knowledge migrant, that route isn't open to you. Then each of you needs a permit of your own, or you marry or register your partnership before the application. What comes with the partner permit is at the DIMAS application further on in your plan.

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.

School is the softener. Aruban education follows the Dutch model: taught in Dutch, with mavo, havo and vwo, and compulsory schooling from age four until the seventeenth birthday. So the children switch over without a language break. When to enrol is in the article about school with this step.

Who learns the language, and when? In the classroom it's Dutch. But the language of the island is Papiamento, on the playground too. Often the partner without work needs that language most, and that's exactly the one without colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

Choose below the date on which you want to be standing on Aruba. The step-by-step plan works out whether that's feasible with what still has to happen.

Three things set the pace here:

• The permit. Count on ten weeks for it.
• The registration on the island, with everything that follows from it.
• The container on the water.

A target date is yours. You can always move it, and moving it is a perfectly good outcome.