Two Americans emigrate to New Zealand from Colorado,
USA.
We talk about
our life in Nelson, New Zealand.
After sending off our EOI, the hardest part in this process had begun: the waiting. The interminable waiting. So many steps along the way, so much waiting. And what did we do in between all the waiting? We talked and talked and dreamed about New Zealand. We made plans we had no idea that we would be able to see through, we chose a location to live even though no one had asked us to move yet. We talked endlessly about the possibility, and often drove ourselves mad and to the point of further exhaustion. We wanted this badly.
One of the best features of the NZI system is the online interaction and ability to get updates via a website login. We set up an account and we could track our progress online at most any hour of the day. Angela knows this because she would log on to check status almost nearly every hour of every day! Even on days when she knew nothing would be happening.
But in mid-September 2005 we received a letter from London, pre-confirmed by an online status change, that we would be invited to apply for residency under the Skilled Migrant Category. WOO HOO!! While we had expected this, it still felt like the best surprise you could get. The official letter from London contained all the materials we would need to submit our application.
Included in this monstrous packet was a print-out of our EOI submission onto which we would make any corrections. That document was some 40 pages long, argh. In addition, we had to provide supporting documentation to our claims made, such as copies of degrees and transcripts of our post-high school education. To make matters worse, every document had to be either an original or a notarized copy of an original—this was going to take some time.
We would have to send away our passports, marriage certificate, and birth certificates. We had to visit the local police to obtain our fingerprints and write to the FBI to confirm we had no police records, that we were not wanted or former criminals. [Even if you have a police record, it would not necessarily mean you could not be allowed residency.]
But it was the medical testing that took the most effort, making appointments with doctors for all sorts of tests, each having a chest x-ray completed at the hospital, and then revisiting doctors to attest to their analysis of all these tests. We had appointments every week for nearly a month to do this. We hit a slight snag here, because Don’s chest x-ray showed the results of his shoulder surgery. The radiologist reviewing the x-ray was compelled to mark on our NZI form that Don’s x-ray was “abnormal” because of this. As such, we were required to send off Don’s x-ray with our application and a statement of what the abnormality was. A minor blip, but a blip.
Angela had to document her work experience by showing pay stubs proving full-time work for the past six years. She had to document satisfactory performance and verify she held the title and job she claimed, especially because she was trying to prove it was closely related to social work, an area of skills shortage. For many people, documenting this would have been simple if you had a human resources department to whom you could request a letter verifying the necessary facts. Because Angela was the sole employee, at the time, at a small non-profit organisation, and she had not informed her employer of her decision to move to New Zealand, finding the needed documentation proved a challenge. She collected notarized copies of her performance reviews, copies of newspaper clippings (saved by the organisation for a press history) showing her attending events, copies of tax returns and computer printouts of pay stubs with an explanation about direct deposit; because everything was done electronically, “original” copies did not exist! Luckily NZI did not contest this.
We had to verify that we were married and living together for the prior two years; to do this we sent away original mortgage statements documenting a two-year period as well as our orignial marriage certificate.
But we flew through it all as quickly as we could and submitted our application and all original materials within one month. We sent away all the original documents we could, putting faith in the fact that they would eventually come back to us. We chose to send notarised copies only when necessary, in order to cause the least amount of suspicion or confusion or whatever! As it turned out, we were very glad in the end we’d chosen that option as it sped up receipt of our documents for immigration after all was said and done.
Our packet of materials, application and everything else, was submitted on 12 October 2005. Let the waiting begin.
back to Part 4: Immigration forms | Immigration home | on to Part 6: The queue
