LLC moves to New Zealand: the boring visa stuff…
Beautiful and lovely New Zealand – the effort for us to move there has been immense.
Over the past six months or so, seeing the struggle we went through to get the family here, several bloggers suggested I do a post on the nuts and bolts of moving a multi-national family from the UK to New Zealand. This is the first in a series of really boring posts. Stop now if you’re here to read about cake (though I will admit, a lot of it was consumed out of stress in the process of sorting this out).
Here’s some BB Bakery tarts to keep you happy.
To start with – I have two British children. They were the easy ones to sort out. I made sure as soon as they were born that they got New Zealand citizenship by descent and applied for Kiwi passports at the same time. I will tell you now – the New Zealand High Commission in London is probably your most efficient and friendly set of government representatives you will ever come across. BLC’s was all processed within eight weeks of her being born, Mr Man Jr’s within three (it was December, Christmas meant things were really quiet and he actually had a passport the day after they confirmed with me that he was officially a NZ citizen). The entire process cost us around £150 per child and if you want to know more about how to do this, just head to the High Commission’s website.
Mr Man on the other hand was a massively long and at times challenging process. This isn’t because of NZ’s tough rules on immigration (though they are strict) – it is because he was actually born in another country than the UK and that in itself required getting further checks that we weren’t aware of until the High Commission told us what was needed.
He started his application in July – getting the required medical, chest x-ray, police certificates (his and mine) etc – then taking it in to TT Visa Services who are based in Westminster (all applications go through them, they’re not private immigration advisers). The internet forums told us to expect the process to take 9-12 weeks, in reality, the process actually took six months due to the issue I touched on above. I will say this though, the guy who case managed (processed) his visa was excellent at keeping us informed on what was happening and what the next steps were. We were able to get Mr Man’s passport and all the documents we sent in back at the end of January. We were also lucky that because we’ve lived together for so long (six years) Mr Man was able to skip the partnership residency visa he initially applied for and was issued with permanent residency straight away. The cost for his visa was around £900.
My advice would be to give yourselves six months if you are applying for a work/residency visa in New Zealand. Do not book flights until you have this in your hands. If you are the partner of the visa applicant and are a New Zealand Citizen, you will also have a lot of paperwork to complete including getting a police certificate and outlining everywhere you’ve lived/travelled for the past seven years. You can find more details on NZ work and residency visas here.
I think I always took being a Kiwi for granted and that getting Mr Man into NZ would be super easy. It really wasn’t. I would say that New Zealand is as strict on immigration control as the UK is, possibly even stricter; the UK just costs a lot and makes you reapply for stuff a lot before you can finally get that permanent residency and citizenship. I will also state that NZ is more concerned about character and health requirements than your financial situation which nearly became a barrier for me to live in the UK during the times I re-applied for my UK visa.
Getting his residency in our hands, we then set about selling our flat and moving our stuff. Those were entire beasts in themselves… Now, where’s the gin?
