New immigration law
01 Dec 2011
The Dutch parliament has approved a new immigration law. This new law was scheduled to come into effect on 1 January 2011, but has been postponed because of technical problems. It is not yet clear what the new effective date will be.
The new law is called Modern Migratiebeleid (Dutch for 'modern migration policy'). Under the law new procedures will come into force. The aim of the law is to make the Netherlands more welcoming for specific groups such as highly-skilled migrants and students. For those groups immigration procedures will be speeded up.
One of the main changes for international students will be the monitoring of their study progress. Students who don’t make enough progress risk losing their residence permit.