Hi Jacques: Are you familiar with the International US Social Security Agreement Treaty Agreement(with 24 other nations such as The Netherlands and others..) and how it applies? Basically, it seems that if have been working internationally...your missing quarter credits may be credited stateside to one's SS#? or is that not correct? in a worst case scenario...or should I just try to work in the USA during my vacations to meet the SS quarterly minimum income of $1130? which is what I will try to do...I have 38 qualifying quarters to date...but the last quarter was in 1996...or is the best thing just to start getting some qualifying quarters on my record in the US? I look forward to your response. Many thanks!

Coordination of US and foreign Social Security systems is, as you can imagine, very complicated. The best explanation can be found at this site. at this site. US Social Security will count the "quarters" you earned under another system towards US work credits. The above site gives you details on that too.

You can work in the US while here on vacations but under the Totalization of Benefits rule, you may not need to.

Jacques