Two Americans emigrate to New Zealand from Colorado,
USA.
We talk about
our life in Nelson, New Zealand.
Angela had always wanted to do jury duty, had waited nearly 20 years to get called the first time. Of all the times to get called, it was that week, the week before her free trip to Mexico and in the midst of the final review of her immigration application. She went in early Monday morning and sat with a crowd of hundreds required to show up. It was announced that three trials required juries: one, a civil case anticipated to last 4-6 weeks (are you KIDDING me?), a criminal case expected to last 9-10 days (OH MY GOSH), and another criminal case expected to last 3-5 days. Seriously, had she pissed off the luck gods??
As it turns out … she was drawn as a potential juror on the shortest criminal case. Just being called from a pool of hundreds was unlucky enough, but she was grateful it was for the shortest trial. She discovered by asking the presiding judge that she didn’t have to be dismissed just for having vacation plans, she might be required to serve and miss her trip. Guess what? Not only was she selected to be questioned as juror #11, she was chosen to serve and even became foreperson on a trial that lasted until 2pm on that Friday before her trip to Mexico. At least the trial was a diversion from thinking about NZI and awaiting a decision!
The immigration officer had scheduled the final interview with Angela during the week of her trial. Of course, finding a time that would work between London and around Angela’s rigid court schedule was not easy. But the interview went off early one morning, taking about 15 minutes. It seemed routine enough with the questions being what she had been told to expect by other immigrants.
Finally, Angela was given the opportunity to ask questions, so she asked when she might expect to hear about a decision. It was the only question that mattered, right? The immigration officer said, and this is not a direct quote of course, “We have three options, the first would be to deny your application altogether, and I am not going to recommend that. The second would be to issue you a work-to-residence permit whereby you’d be allowed to live and work for 2 years in the country, but you’d have to show proof of three consecutive months of employment within that timeframe to obtain a full residency permit. The third option is to grant residency straight out.” Huh. Well, wasn’t that good news? She’d not deny us residency, so essentially, we were going! True to Don’s character, he was excited, but wouldn’t let himself get totally excited until the final word came down.
Our application went to final review and we went to Mexico that next week. Don brought along his computer so we could stay on top of email, awaiting any word from London. Angela checked the immigration site nearly hourly between dips in the pool, as updates sometimes would show up there before you’d hear from your immigration officer. In fact, on that trip we had some of those "freaky" conversations, two of which were with people who had taken time off from work and traveled the world and even New Zealand. They told us their story and inside we were bursting knowing (outside doing the "uh huhs" to their face) that it could be any day that we'd have news that we would actually be living there--and we'd be even cooler than them!
On Wednesday, 15 February 2006, Angela checked the immigration site to see if there was any change in her application status. Then she checked her email to learn that the immigration officer was pleased to inform us that we’d been approved for full residency!! FULL RESIDENCY! We were in, we were done, it was a go. Tequila shots all around for us, several to be exact!
back to Part 8: The final leg of the race | Immigration home | on to Part 10: Sharing with family, friends and work
