9 oktober 2008 - If highly educated persons want to work in the Netherlands for a period shorter than three months, it takes rather long before they have the required visa and the work permit. According to the IND immigration service the flexible migrants arrangement only applies to foreign highly educated persons who want to work in the Netherlands for longer than three months. The IND processes these applications via one desk and strives to wind them up within two weeks.

Research secretary Joke van den Bandt from employers’ organization VNO-NCW suspects that the bottleneck for the applications shorter than three months lies with the Ministry of Social Affairs. Especially the application for the work permit takes a lot of time. “Nevertheless, for shorter projects big companies also need highly trained staff members that cannot be found here”, says PvdA MP Marianne Besselink. “It concerns multinationals that want to finish a project in the Netherlands with an internationally composed team of staff members, or a university that wants to accommodate a foreign trainee for a couple of months.”