[Norwegian Blue]

Well, I have recovered sufficiently to post a few questions :D :D

After 2 rather brief (around 30 min.) telephonic interviews I have a good job offer and so we have decided to move to NZ. I felt physically ill after doing that on Tuesday evening. The job is a very close match to what I do here and the salary probably similar from all the research I have done on this forum.

The only problem is that they need me there very quickly (they are prepared to wait 6 weeks) and I will try my hardest to comply, but they do understand the delays involved esp. Police certs. So I have 2 questions:

1. Has anyone applied for South African police certs from the UK? Any advice welcome. We will go and have our fingerprints taken tomorrow. Hopefully the Milton Keynes police station will have the necessary to do that. Our UK police certs are already being processed.

2. Because this has taken us a bit by surprise, we are in no way ready for the move. The idea is that I will get a WTR visa and leave ASAP, and my family will follow once all the ends have been tied up here (probably not until August). So question 2, do I submit an EOI to the pool for next week, apply for a WTR for me and then hopefully we get PR before the family move later in the year? How will it complicate the EOI process with me in NZ and family still here?

Hope this makes sense, my brain is still fried :p

[Smiler]

Wow fried my brain too, just reading it! :p

No advice on which visa to go for sorry, but can your employer help with any of it at all? That may take some of the stress out of the equation for you.

I just wanted to say well done on the job offer. :cheers

(We packed and shipped out in 10 days, so I know how you're feeling right now!)

[JandM]

Wow, all the best!:clap No wonder you're feeling boggled. I'm sure you'll get some good suggestions when the people who've already got to NZ see this later on.

[BkyMonster]

My advice, apply for EOI now, then apply for a work permit for yourself. This way you have time to get all your details worked on (police certificates etc) for the EOI/PR while being able to start work when you need to. If necessary your family can follow you on a family stream work permit before you achieve PR.
If you arrive on a 1 year+ work permit you can bring your household items over the same as if you had PR so no worries there.

You can apply to have your EOI application office changed after you get to NZ in some cases, so you won't have to shuffle documents from NZ to somewhere else. I'd do this as soon as you have a NZ address if you can. Alternatively you could wait to submit your EOI until you have a NZ address, then the EOI application would be NZ based.
As you have a job offer things will go quickly with the EOI so you might start working on the difficult items now, police certs and such.

HTH and doesn't boggle you even more. Good luck!

[andrew_08]

Congrats on job. A bit of info (not much) on the South African Police Certs, my wife and I are currently living in the UK (originally South African), so thought that we would apply for our SA police certs while on holiday in SA in February.

We applied on the 6th February (at a local police station), the certificates will be posted to a South African address and then couriered to us by my mother-in-law. So far, no certificates and we're just over the 4 week mark.

Hope that helps, good luck with the rushed move, hope everything falls into place quickly.

[roseandrob]

Regarding the South African police clearance - we got ours very quickly (4 weeks) through an agent (who was recommended by the SA High Commission) as we didn't trust the SA postal service. The telephone number for the embassy (for ease of reference) is 020 7451 7299 and they can give you the UK agent's details. We paid £120 for the service and all documents were couriered to SA and back again and sent on to us. You also have to get fingerprints taken and that cost us something in the region of £45 from Scotland Yard. We walked into our local police station and asked for my partner's fingerprints to be taken and they literally laughed at us (was quite embarrassing actually!). The information online is a bit confusing and from what I can gather only Scotland Yard can take fingerprints, but I could be wrong.

[Norwegian Blue]

Thanks all for the encouragement and helpfull replies. I spent most of today doing loads more research. Thanks for the headsup roseandrob. I think £120 will be money well spent. I had already looked at a courier service to deliver and collect but the SAPS website don't give any clue about how they notify you that they are ready for collection? Do the agents assist with paying in Rands, or did you still have to sort that out? We'll find out tomorrow about the fingerprints....

[roseandrob]

No problem. We found the SAPS website horrendously unclear (hence why we went to our local police station and asked for our fingerprints to be taken!). We had to fill in the application form, get a bankers draft for the Rands made out to the SAPS which was about £8 I think and send that all off with the fingerprints, a copy of your SA ID book and a copy of your passport. I would definitely recommend using the agency that the embassy recommends. We found them to be really good. Actually now that I think about it, they will get the bankers draft for you, its just we had already gotten it before deciding to use an agency so the agency just deducted that from the final cost. You just pop everything off in the post with a cheque and a few weeks later you should have it!

[roseandrob]

PS: I reckon the person/agent in the UK probably has a friend or contact in the SAPS who signs the police checks off and sends them back.... for a small fee :D

[Norwegian Blue]

Thanks roseandrob. We bank with IF, so with no branch to go into, a bankers draft is a tad difficult, but if the agency will do it, it will make it a lot easier for us :-)

[mgbridges]

We submitted our EOI and ITA whilst living in London and we needed to get police checks from Australia and that required certified fingerprints and the only place we could get them was Scotland Yard. We had to ring to make an appointment and just getting through to somebody took a bit of perseverance and the only appointment they had was 2/3 wks later so I'd get moving on that side of things asap. I'm afraid I can't remember the number to ring but your local police station should be able to help you out, ours did!

In terms of submitting EOI now or later I'd say submit now and if needed get yourself a Work Permit/Visa to start work. We'd already submitted our ITA and OH needed to get out to NZ to start work so he applied for a Work Permit (cross referenced to our ITA) and that was processed quickly and it all worked fine. Our Blue Stickers were ready to be put in our passports by the time he came back to the UK to collect me and our son one month later so we all went together with our passports to NZ House in London to get them and flew out 3 days later.

HTH
Anneliese

[roseandrob]

I second that; we had to wait a few weeks for an appointment at Scotland Yard. Perhaps call the embassy and ask if there is a quicker way of getting fingerprints taken?

[Norwegian Blue]

Thanks again. I have confirmed it is Scotland Yard only. I can get an appointment on the 15th for £60, but they won't do my wife at the same time(too much effort for a Saturday so they told me) or 19th / 20th at £45 each. Only problem is my wife is teaching!!

I think I have decided that I will go over quickly on a 1 year work visa so that I don't need the paperwork now and get all these little bits and medicals sorted during the April holidays. It's not that long since we moved here and got citizenship, so we still have a file full of all our docs for that.

I'll lodge our EOI now and hopefully if that is tied to the fact that I am already in NZ working we won't have any major probs. The family would then join me in August. (Hah, hah, hah just proved that OUR plans are worth nowt :-0

Thanks again all, (keep the advise coming).
Pete

[Norwegian Blue]

Things are moving fast. Have had my employment contract, which I have signed and sent back to NZ. EOI selected from the pool, now let's hope there are no show stoppers :roll Just need to book medicals......

For any other South Africans living in the UK, I can recommend that you try the Beds police for fingerprints. Had ours done in Leighton Buzzard yesterday :) If I could recommend them for an award I would. No appointment needed, they couldn't have been more helpful. Thames Valley are just appaling. I also phoned the SAPS in Pretoria, and they seemed to think that if I could justify it, they "could" process the forms in less than 4 weeks.

The SA Embassy in London wouldn't give me info over the phone about the whole process esp. the courier they recommend, so can anyone tell me the name of the courier / agent to send the forms to Pretoria? I phoned DHL, but they will only do them one way from here and I'd have to get DHL SA to pick up as a separate transaction. It is £50 from here, so the £120 quoted above is a good deal.

Thanks again for all the help and advise thus far.

Pete