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[nephthys224]

Just got a call from the IND saying that they were attempting to make a decision on my residence permit (finally!), but that we had not submitted the necessary copy of Rick's passport. Which is rubbish-- not only did we bring our own copies, but we gave both our passports to the interviewer in June and watched her make extracopies of them, then put

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[cakeinoz]

(sorry, just purusing through your LJ. I saw you on the expat community!)

I wanted to add to this entry, though I'm not sure that you'll want to hear it at this point, that if your bf is Dutch, then you should have only had to pay around 35 euro for that permit. (er, yes, I looked at your user info to get that bit of information. Sorry!)

for example: My husband is German, and we moved to Holland from Germany 5 months ago. The usual headaches with bureaucracy took place. I had to do the research on my own, but I found that the 400 euro permit is mainly for people claiming asylum, or coming over on their own in some other fashion. If you are the registered partner of a European (yes, Dutch included in that), then you are eligible for the much cheaper 35(ish) euro residence visa. Yes, it is a full visa, I have work permits and everything with it.

The maddening thing, and why I'm not surprised that you didn't know about it??: When I went to get the paperwork for it, I told the man "I'm an American with a German partner applying for a residence permit etc" and he automatically gave me the paperwork for the expensive one. And I said "uh, no, I thought it was more like 30 euro?" and he said "oh, so you want that one."

WTF. No, I WANT to pay 350 euro more. please, please let me! feh.

It also gets processed a lot faster than the other one (since it's an easy call, as you've got a partner here). I had it back within a couple of months.

blahblahblah I might be wrong, maybe you already looked into this. Sorry for going off on a tangent here. :)

[nephthys224]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! I am somehow not surprised, but I am definitely pissed that I didn't find out about this sooner. The info on the IND website clearly states that residence permit granted on the basis of partner- or family reunification costs 430 euros, and never even makes mention of the cheaper fee. Neither did any of the (many) people I spoke to over the telephone say anything about it. Bastards.

Thanks anyway, though, hehe. :)