Permanent Residence and Naturalisation in Belgium

Hi colorhislips, welcome on Expat-blog!

I hope other members will be able to help you.

I wish you good luck
Christine

Er, you become a resident when you move here and register to be here legally, and get your residency... Also, it's only *possible* to get naturalization after 3 yrs, it is completely up to them as to whether they feel like they should give it to you, and it depends completely on how they view your situation, your ties to the area, etc. Nothing says they will grant it. You do are not simply *granted* citizenship until after being here for 7 years.

Thanks Melby for your clarification.

However, I am a bit confused over "temporary residence" and "permanent residence". If I do obtain a Work Permit B (which goes for a year), do you know whether I need to apply for temporary or permanent (considering that I intend to get my Work Permit B renewed every year).

Thanks in advance.

You can apply for "temporary residency"? I didn't know there was such a thing. If you are coming over for work, I'm pretty sure you would get the ID card that, indeed, has to be renewed annually, regardless, so... I'm a bit confused there myself as to what "temporary" would be...

My ID is valid for 5 yrs (as well as for working), as I am married to an EU citizen, so it's a different deal. I'd suggest either working through all the options on the Belgian site for all that, or calling the Belgian consulate and asking them for clarification.

I wish I kept the link now... I read before that there is a status for "temporary worker" and I am not sure if that is what you are referring to? But temporary workers are granted stay in Belgium for up to 3 months (or was it 6)!

Hey everyone, thanks for all your help.

Melby, from your experience, how is job searching for an English speaker in Belgium? I know this question gets asked a lot, but considering that the industry I want to work in is marketing/advertising (I do speak some French, and I am picking up Dutch ever so slowly). What's their acceptability of job candidates who require a work permit? I heard that they are quiet reluctant, as they have to pay higher taxes.

hi colorhislips,
an English-speaking job.....well that's totally depends on your expertise. if you are gonna work by IT sector e.g programmer or software engineer etc then may be language is not a big hurdle for you. but in public service sector, English has a very little scope due to a lot of competetion. Even if you are working with English-customer, you need french (in wallonie) or dutch ( in flemish area) to communicate with your boss or upper-management.

Secondly, you get naturalization very easily after 3 years if you have a 5 year residence card(which normally u get if you are married with a citizen). but if you have short term card like one year or 6 months then you need to stay consecutive 7 years and offcourse you have to adopt culture and language too. n i have never heard about a three month card.

nosheen wrote:

Secondly, you get naturalization very easily after 3 years if you have a 5 year residence card(which normally u get if you are married with a citizen).

Do you have experience with this? I intend to follow that option myself, once the time arrives. How do you know it's "easy" to get it? The official info about it says they "decide" whether to grant it or not, so it didn't seem like one would just be a shoo-in for it...? What is the process?

hi nosheen! welcome to Expat.com. Thanks for your contribution to colorhislips' question.

we'd love to know more about you, so it'd be great if you could post an introduction in the Belgium Forum

Kind regards,
Haf