Tales of IND

On paper, the Netherlands has a really liberal immigration policy. If you can support yourself and pay for your own healthcare, they'll ostensibly let you in. Instead of legislating sound immigration policy, however, they prefer to filter prospective newcomers by attempting to break their will.

In the legal forums on Exaptica.com, you'll find hundreds of posts from pour souls stuck in immigration limbo. It's enough to make a grown man weep like an Italian widow.

Relatively speaking, our application has been going smoothly. All we get is the run around: you need to go to this office, no that office, back to the first office. No one seems to know anything, but they'll happily dish out misinformation.

The long and short of it is, we're barely legal - get your mind out of the gutter! Our attorney has contacted the immigration office (IND) several times and each time they tell us that we'll get our approval this week. We're coming up on week three since they started this mantra.

The upside is that we have a sticker in our passport that allows us to hang out in the country while they make things up as they go along.

The down side is that we can't get tax ID numbers, which we need to open a bank account. We need a bank account so we can get a 'pinpass' card because no one takes our US credit cards.

I feel a little like we're on the lam.