Emigrating
Emigrating: what comes at you in practice
Every emigration journey is different, and yet they all go through the same five phases. This page explains which those are, how the two kinds of journey fundamentally differ, roughly what it costs, and why the order matters more than the pace.
Laatst bijgewerkt: August 2026
Choose your destination
Do you already know where you want to go?
Thirty-six destinations, all fully worked out — with the journey, the costs and the pitfalls of that country. Not sure yet? Then just read on: the rest of this page applies to every destination.
- Australiavisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Spainadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Portugaladministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Franceadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Curaçaoroute within the Kingdom€ 299eenmalig
- Englandvisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Germanyadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- United Statesvisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Switzerlandadministrative route€ 299eenmalig
- Canadavisa route€ 399eenmalig
- New Zealandvisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Estoniaadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Denmarkadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Swedenadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Norwayadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Dubaivisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Japanvisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Chinavisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Arubaroute within the Kingdom€ 299eenmalig
- Belgiumadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Finlandadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Italyadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Greeceadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Thailandvisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Bonaireroute within the Kingdom€ 299eenmalig
- Austriaadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Croatiaadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Maltaadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Cyprusadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- Irelandadministrative route€ 199eenmalig
- South Africavisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Indonesiavisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Sint Maartenroute within the Kingdom€ 299eenmalig
- Turkeyvisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Panamavisa route€ 399eenmalig
- Surinamevisa route€ 399eenmalig
The structure
Five phases, wherever you're going
Whether you're moving to Australia or to Spain: the journey has the same shape. What differs is the content of phase two — and that difference then decides almost everything.
- 01
Orientation
Can it be done, is it allowed, and do we really want it?
Before you spend a euro, you want to know three things: whether there's a route for you at all, roughly what the journey is going to cost, and whether everyone coming along really stands behind it. This phase produces no paperwork and therefore feels like nothing is happening — while this is where most journeys are saved or lost. Whoever is honest here about feasibility saves themselves thousands of euros in assessments later for a route that was never going to work.
- 02
Permission
May you live there, and if so: how do you record that?
This is the phase where the two kinds of journey diverge. Going to a country outside the EU, you need a visa and have to show you meet the requirements — often with a points system, an occupation list and a language test. Going within the EU, you may simply live there, but you have to register as soon as you stay longer than three months, and there are requirements attached to that too.
- 03
Paperwork
Everything that has to be proven
Birth certificates, diplomas, work experience, police certificates, medical examinations, translations. On its own each document is a formality; together they form a puzzle in which lead times and validity periods work against each other. This is the phase where most avoidable mistakes are made — almost always by applying for something too early.
- 04
Departure
Closing the Netherlands and moving your life
Deregistering with the municipality, ending your health insurance, stopping benefits, the tax return for the year of emigration, cancelling subscriptions, arranging mail. At the same time the move itself: sell, ship or take along — a choice that can make your budget differ by ten thousand euros. Both tracks run in parallel and each has its own deadlines.
- 05
Landing
From arriving to living
Phone number, bank account, tax number, healthcare, housing, school, driving licence. The order is more important here than people expect, because the registrations hook into each other: no bank card without an address, without a tax number your wages are taxed at the maximum, no school without municipal registration. Whoever knows the right order is settled in two weeks where others take two months.
Two kinds of journey
Getting permission, or getting through bureaucracy
Emigrating outside the EU is a completely different problem from emigrating within the EU. Not heavier or lighter — different. Which of the two applies to you decides what your journey looks like, how long it takes and what it costs.
Visa route
Australia, Canada, China, the US, the UK, Dubai, Japan, New Zealand
You need permission before you go.
- Often a points system: age, education, work experience and English decide whether you qualify
- Your occupation usually has to be on an official list — if it isn't, there's no route
- A recognised language test, and in many countries an assessment of your diplomas and work experience by a designated body
- Part of the waiting time is beyond your control: you lodge and wait for an invitation or decision
- Doorlooptijd
- 12 to 24 months
- Aanvraagkosten
- Several thousand euros in application fees
De valkuil
Meeting the official minimum doesn't mean you'll be invited. On the Australian 189 route the legal floor is 65 points, while invitations in practice fall around 85 to 95 points. That difference between 'may take part' and 'gets chosen' is where most people lose time and money.
Administrative route
Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Italy, Sweden
You may live there. You just still have to arrange it.
- As an EU citizen you need no visa and no permission in advance
- Stay longer than three months and most countries have a registration duty — and where it's missing (France) you start the clocks of healthcare and tax yourself
- The challenge is the order: every document is the key to the next, and many counters work by appointment only
- Your own pace decides everything — there's no authority making you wait
- Doorlooptijd
- 3 to 9 months
- Aanvraagkosten
- Tens to a few hundred euros in fees
De valkuil
Because no visa is needed, people systematically underestimate this journey. But 'may stay' is something else than 'settled': without a registration certificate you get stuck later at the bank, the tax office and the vehicle authority. And the tax side — where are you liable, what happens to your Dutch pension — is often more complicated with an EU move than with a visa journey.
Costs
Roughly what emigrating costs
There's no amount that's right for everyone — it depends on where you're going, with how many people, and what you take. But the costs always fall into the same three blocks, and it pays to look at them separately.
Application and paperwork
€ 50 – € 15,000
This is where the two kinds of journey diverge the most. With an EU move this block stays limited to fees of tens of euros — for Spain that's € 9.84 for your NIE and € 12 for your registration certificate, per person. With a visa route it's the biggest fixed item you can't negotiate away: the assessment of your diplomas and work experience, a language test per person, translations, police certificates, medical examinations, and the visa fees themselves. Those fees alone are well over three thousand euros for Australia for one applicant, and they count on per family member.
The move
€ 500 – € 15,000
The biggest variable, and entirely your choice. Selling everything and starting again there costs almost nothing; your own sea container to Australia runs into many thousands. Within Europe it's considerably cheaper, because then it goes by road instead of by sea. Taking pets and a car counts heavily here — and they have their own deadlines that lie months ahead.
The first months
€ 5,000 – € 20,000
The item most often forgotten. Deposit and rent in advance, temporary furnished rental while your household contents are on the way, a car, and simply living without income coming in yet. Count on a buffer for the period between arrival and the first salary — it's almost always longer than expected.
Two things stand out as soon as you work it out. The visa fees are higher than almost anyone expects — for a family to Australia it's many thousands of euros, in government fees alone. And the landing period, the item almost nobody thinks of in advance, is still the biggest of the three for most people.
Work it out for your situation
The amounts above are the outer limits; your journey sits somewhere within them. The calculator asks where you want to go and then four things — with how many people you're going, whether your household contents come along, whether a pet has to come and whether the car comes — and puts a range next to it right away, with the rates and the estimates named separately.
Already know your destination? Then you can go straight there:
Order
Why timing matters more than pace
Most people approach it as a list: tick off as much as possible as fast as possible. With emigrating that backfires, because documents have not only a lead time but also a use-by date. Applying for everything as early as possible means the first has already expired by the time the last one comes in.
The textbook example is the police certificate. You need one from every country where you've lived twelve months or longer since you were sixteen. Foreign certificates take four to twelve weeks — so you want to start early. But they're valid for twelve months, and they have to be valid at the moment your application is assessed, not at the moment you lodge it. Applying too early is just as expensive as too late.
At the same time there are steps you should start as early as possible precisely because they have the longest lead time, and steps that can only begin once something else is finished. Whoever doesn't know those dependencies waits at the wrong moment for the wrong thing.
That is exactly the work an emigration agency does for you — and exactly the work Vertrekklaar exists for. Not the advice, but the order.
Pitfalls
The mistakes made most often
Almost no journey strands on something unavoidable. It goes wrong on things that could be seen in advance.
- Assuming the official minimum
- With points systems the legal floor isn't the score you're invited at. Whoever aims for the minimum lodges and then hears nothing for years.
- Applying for documents too early
- Police certificates and medical examinations are valid for twelve months. Whoever arranges them at the start of the journey gets to do them again at the end — and pay again.
- Wanting to start everything at once
- Some steps can only begin once another is finished. Working in parallel where you can is smart; working in parallel where you can't only produces waiting time and expired papers.
- Forgetting the partner moving along
- The paperwork is often in one name, but life isn't. Whether the partner who isn't the main applicant can find work there is at least as decisive for the move's success as the application itself.
- Buying before you've lived there
- Buying a house in a country you only know from holidays, in a neighbourhood you don't know, in a market you can't judge. This is the most expensive mistake Dutch emigrants make. Rent a year first.
- Putting off the tax side
- Where you become liable for tax, what happens to your Dutch pension, whether you keep your home — those are decisions you take before departure, not after. Repairing afterwards is expensive or impossible.
The departure guide
Five mails, and you see your whole journey
Not ready to start yet? Choose your destination and we'll send you the departure guide: five mails in a week and a half, with the order, the pitfalls and the real costs. After that only a short update when something in your country really changes — at most one a month, no newsletter, and you can switch it off at any time.
Read on
Getting concrete
Already know where you want to go? Then this is where you get more concrete than a general explanation can be.
Australia
The three visa routes, the points system, the skills assessment and the 60-day clock. Five phases, fully worked out.
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Spain
NIE, empadronamiento and the green registration certificate — in the order that prevents you starting over at every counter.
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Portugal
The NIF you already arrange from the Netherlands, the CRUE at the municipality, and the ISV exemption that saves thousands of euros — if in time.
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France
No registration duty, no counter — and precisely because of that an order you have to know yourself: the slow healthcare enrolment, the proof of address, the carte grise.
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Curaçao
Same passport, a different country: the declaration by operation of law, Kranshi and the sédula, and household contents that cross the ocean by sea container.
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England
A sponsor you first have to find, the Immigration Health Surcharge you pay up front, and the TOR1 you need done before shipping.
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Germany
The Anmeldung is the mother of all German proofs: almost every other step wants to see it first. Plus the choice between GKV and PKV, which you make only once.
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United States
No general route, but a door of its own for Dutch entrepreneurs: the E-2 visa from the 1957 treaty, without an employer and without a draw.
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Switzerland
Fourteen days for the registration, three months for the health insurance that takes effect retroactively — and permanent residence after five years thanks to a treaty from 1935.
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Canada
You're ranked instead of assessed, and the French-language draws close well over a hundred points lower than the regular ones. With health insurance that starts differently per province.
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New Zealand
No ranking but a threshold: six points, and you hear right away. In return, almost every door starts with an accredited employer.
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Estonia
No application: one free registration gives five years of residence rights, and after that almost everything is logging in — the country that put its whole government online.
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Denmark
Registering costs zero kroner; the money sits where there's no counter — a deposit of up to six months' rent, and a car tax of up to 150% with no relocation exemption.
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Sweden
Registration with the migration agency was abolished in 2014 — the pitfall is the housing market, with years-long queues and a second-hand market with its own rules.
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Norway
Free movement via the EEA, but the border is real: household contents pass free with a declaration, the car and alcohol never. With the PAYE choice of 25% in your first year.
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Dubai
No points and no lottery — the application takes days, not months. Against zero income tax stands zero accrual: the honest trade, calculated.
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Japan
No points threshold: your employer applies for the Certificate of Eligibility, and the visa is a week's work. The real selection is the job — and the language.
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China
A threshold, not a contest: bachelor plus two years' experience or sixty points, and the chain is counted in weeks. The honest side: the country where the Netherlands arranges the least for you.
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Aruba
Same passport, a stricter door than Curaçao: five years of permit duty. In return your AOW that comes along in full — and Dutch-language education for the children.
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Austria
Three clocks and you're in: three days for the Meldezettel, one month for the car, four months for the residence document. With fourteen monthly salaries and a pension treaty from 1970 without withholding tax.
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Bonaire
A special municipality of the Netherlands — and still a real emigration: IND declaration, five-day clock, sédula. Mild system, hard safety net: there's no unemployment benefit.
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Belgium
Close by and still a real emigration: annex 19, the community police officer and the EU card — and the car that sometimes makes money thanks to the BPM refund. Whoever keeps working in the Netherlands takes half their safety net along.
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Finland
Three registrations in a row — Migri, DVV, Kela — and a digital catch-22 you break with the right order. Above all do the car sum up front: the relocation exemption on the car tax hasn't existed since 2015.
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Italy
Codice fiscale, home, residenza, health card — in that order, because every step is the proof for the next. And fiscally one of the friendliest countries on the site: AOW and pension taxed exclusively in Italy, with the 7% regime in the South.
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Greece
AFM, home, certificate, AMKA — and the certificate comes from the police, not the municipality. For pensioners there's a sum attached: 7% on all your foreign income for fifteen years, if you sign before 31 March and your pension isn't from the ABP.
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Thailand
Your stay is granted anew every year here, and four clocks run at once. The two things Dutch people underestimate: there's no S1 and no treaty contribution for your healthcare, and Thailand isn't on the SVB's treaty list.
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The knowledge base
All articles per country and per phase, with the date they were last checked.
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Ready to begin?
Thirty-six journeys are fully ready — Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Canada, Panama, United States, Suriname, China, Dubai, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Turkey, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand: your step-by-step plan, your documents and your costs in one place, with the timing watched. Pay once, and it's yours.