The step-by-step plan for Sint Maarten

Sint Maarten has been an autonomous country within the Kingdom since 10 October 2010, with an Admission and Expulsion Ordinance of its own — a different law from that of Curaçao and Aruba, even though they resemble each other. Your Dutch passport gives you the right to live there: the law calls that admission by operation of law, with good conduct over the past five years, housing and sufficient means of subsistence as conditions. That right you have laid down in a Declaration by Operation of Law at the immigration service IBP.

And one thing is different here from anywhere else in the Kingdom: the national border runs across the island. The north side is French Saint-Martin — France, EU, euros. You live on one side, and your rights differ per side; this corridor is about the country Sint Maarten. Meanwhile, for every Dutch authority this is an ordinary emigration: your health insurance stops, your benefits stop, your AOW accrual (the Dutch state pension) stops.

Working is allowed: as a Dutch citizen admitted by operation of law you fall outside the work-permit regime for foreigners, and the labour market there is English-speaking and tourism-driven. Healthcare works fundamentally differently from Curaçao: there is no country-of-residence system for everyone. The ZV insurance of the implementing body SZV covers only employees below the wage limit (XCG 120,000 per year). Whoever earns more than that, runs a business or lives off a pension insures themselves entirely privately.

For pensioners that's the breaking point of this corridor: there's no CAK route (that exists nowhere within the Kingdom — bitterly enough it does on the French part of the island), premiums rise steeply with age and above seventy-five many insurers accept no new customers. Read the healthcare article before you plan any further; phase 2 arranges the transition.

Holiday Sint Maarten and living Sint Maarten are two different islands. The touristy south around Simpson Bay charges American prices in American dollars; outside it the rent drops, but the groceries come by boat everywhere. Explore both sides of the border — shopping and eating out can be done on the French side, in euros — and look honestly at what the island doesn't have: the anonymity, the choice and the seasons of the Netherlands, on sixteen by thirteen kilometres.

And weigh the hurricane season (June to November inclusive) seriously: Irma flattened the island almost entirely in 2017, and that risk sits in the insurance premiums, the build quality and the planning of your move. Whoever knows the island outside the high season and still wants it, really wants it.

The calculator for Sint Maarten works on your own moving choices. The paperwork here is strikingly cheap — the Declaration by Operation of Law costs about a hundred euros and the island is a free port, so import duties don't exist. The real money is in the sea container, the rent in American dollars and — for pensioners — the private health insurance that comes back every year.

Rule of thumb: count in dollars, not in guilders. Rents and many groceries are de facto dollarised there, and whoever builds their budget on the official guilder rates counts themselves rich.

This is the step without forms, and yet this is where most journeys fail. Discuss with your partner and, depending on their age, your children: why do we want this, what are we giving up, and what is for each of us the condition for saying yes?

With Sint Maarten the heavy points are the distance — you don't just fly back and forth for a birthday — and the language at school: education there is predominantly in English, and for children that's a bigger step than it looks in the brochure photo. And talk about the hurricane season: a few months of alertness every year is part of life here, and not everyone carries that equally lightly.

Close the orientation phase with a target date for departure. Not as a deadline — as a compass. The clocks that set the pace here are the Declaration by Operation of Law (count on weeks to months), the container (weeks on the water) and the hurricane season: preferably don't plan your arrival in the middle of September. A realistic picture: from serious decision to being settled, this journey takes most people four to nine months.

You fill it in below in this card, and filling it in is completing the step. You can always adjust your target date — the planning adjusts with it.