Some 5,800 people came to the Netherlands to work under the highly-skilled migrant (kennismigrant) scheme last year, including a record 1,880 academics, the immigration service IND said in its annual report, published on Tuesday.

The total is up slightly on 2010, the IND said.
Most highly-skilled migrants came from India (2,020) followed by the US (780), Japan (360) and China (230), the IND said. People from outside the EU can come to the Netherlands as a ‘knowledge migrant’ to work for an established company if they earn more than €51,000 a year.
Last year, the IND carried out 46 checks to make sure knowledge migrant wages were not being inflated in order to give people easier access to the Netherlands. In 25 cases, permits were not granted.
The list of companies which fall under the scheme has also been cut from 6,000 to 1,500 by weeding out firms which have not participated for some time.