American engaged to a Dutch man with a small problem...

[cramsay]

I am an American engaged to a Dutch man and we intend to be married in New York and then hopefully settle in the Netherlands.

He lives there and I live in the US. I am worried that I will have trouble getting a residence visa inspite of the fact that we will be married before I move there because of a DUI that I was convicted of several years ago. It was in the state of California and is considered a misdameanor. Does this have an effect on my ability to move to Holland even if I am married to a Dutch citizen? Would it be best to hire an immigration lawyer to help facilitate with obtaining the Visa?

Thank you kindly for the help.

[cantaro]

As far as I know, a single DUI alone will not be considered a serious criminal background and therefore should not be an obstacle to your moving to the Netherlands. Unless you want to throw away money, you should start the process of obtaining a family reunification visa without a lawyer; you can always hire one if things go wrong at some point.

I hope you have informed yourself about the procedures to follow. In any case, I found one or two websites that may be of interest to you:

Moving from the United States to the Netherlands
http://www.netherlands-embassy.org/arti ... 00000174EN

IND Residence Wizard
Planning to stay in the Netherlands
Conditions
http://www.ind.nl/EN/verblijfwijzer/ver ... =1&lang=en

NB: This should have been posted in the Europe forum (this one is for family immigration to the UK); perhaps an Administrator can move it there.