How Nizar got his highly skilled migrant permit.

As a student in the Netherlands, I did not know much about how the residence permit system works. As soon as I finished my studies, I have applied for the search visa, which has allowed me to work with different employers without any specific requirements. Doing so made things easier which made me just focus on my work and neglect my legal matters regarding immigration.

During the period where I had the search year residence permit, I had found a job where I wanted to stay long term. However, as soon as my residence permit was running out, I received a call from my then employment agency at the time saying that I have to do something about it and they cannot help me out. At the time I had only 1 month left in my search year.

As a result, I had an extremely stressful time because the issue will most likely result in a residence gap, which will reset my 4 years residing at the country. However, during the last 10 days, the company where I was working managed to get in contact with All About Expats. I got forwarded to Patrick who takes care of residence permits. Patrick requested some copies of my documents that I delivered within the day which also got processed that same day. After hearing my concern, Patrick reassured me that I should not worry, and just focus on my work, he would take care of the rest. During the phone call he explained to me that he received far worse cases where some residence permits were expiring in less than a couple of days, and my case was much better.  Doing so, I relaxed a little bit and let the professionals do their work.

Needless to say, 10 days was very short in order for the IND to give me a response about my highly skilled migrant permit decision. To fix this, Jill booked me an appointment during the same week with the IND (I don’t know how she managed because the IND is always fully book and only have openings after a month of the day of the request). In this appointment I got a sticker on my passport that will allow me to live and work in the Netherlands at my usual company while waiting for a decision from the IND. The residence permit request was eventually approved, and I continued doing my at the company where I was working.

Patrick and Jill did an outstanding work on how professional and reassuring they were while they were handling my case, which have calmed me down during an extremely stressful period of time here in the Netherlands. Their managed to get me my highly skilled migrant permit without any residence gaps.

Fast forward a couple of years, I decided to quit my job at the time and study my master’s degree. Patrick saw that my contract was ending and therefore offered me a job at his company because my profile matched the requirements of the job. I accepted the offer and worked along side my studies.

Being an insider at All About Expats allowed me to see how work is handled and see many more cases like mine in the past where expats are having trouble with residence permits on short notices. I saw how timely and professionally urgent cases are handled which was no surprise because I had the same experience in the past.

The customer service team is also very helpful and handles expat requests around the clock. Be it regarding queries about work hours or holidays requests, or even personal questions.

All About Expats gets a 5/5 from my part due to their professionalism, speed of handling requests and quality of work.

Nizar Mekaoui, highly skilled migrant