Residency

We are now official residents of Bonaire, Netherlands.  We got our passport stamp from the immigration office today.  In six months we will get a letter to go get our picture ID...  nothing happens fast on this island.

We celebrated with lunch at "Between Two Buns".

Getting residency required collecting documents with Apostilles while we were still in the US. Marriage and birth certificates required apostilles at the tune of $200 a document.  Apostilles are these certifications that say the document is real and certified. We also had to get FBI finger printed and background checks that could be no more than three months old when we applied for residency.  Also had to show that we had a reliable income (social security and Freedom Environmental pay stubs), bank letters of reference, deed to our house, bank statements for the last six months and every other document we could produce they took.

We used an agent to help us through the process. Our agent, Agnes, worked at the immigration office and has since retired and now runs the Multistore retail store selling tourist trinkets. We visited Agnes at her store two years ago. We met in the back storage room and she gave us the directions for getting residency. It was like going to a 1920's speakeasy and giving a code word to get it.

Agnes completed our application and submitted it in February. This morning we got a call to come to the immigration office and show our passports.  We dove there right away and got our residency.

Residency allows us to have free medical care.  This includes doctor visits, hospital visits, medicine, operations and any other medical care we need. We also get resident fees at the bank which is quite a savings.  We will also get a discount on the  duty we paid on our shipment of stuff to the island. Our house taxes will be at the resident rate.