[shakyle2906]

Hi

We have been advises by NZ House London to apply for work to residence visa's for myself and hubby (hubby has had job offer from company in Wellington and now Auckland) and a student visa for our little one. i understand that these are for 2 years validity. My hubby is a joiner of 25+ years experience.

I have since read loads on EOI's and wonder whether that may be a better option ? especially as for example we cant claim any benefits over in NZ (child) until we can apply for residency in 2 years.

Can anyone offer any advice ???

Much appeciated!

Sharon
x

[jess]

Hi Sharon. If you would have enough points to go for permanent residency, it would seem like the better option, especially witht the benefits. Have you done the points indicator (http://www.immigration.govt.nz/pointsindicator/) in the NZIS site to see if you'd qualify?

[shakyle2906]

Hi Jess

Just did a quick check as you suggested and we scored 170 points.

What exactly do you have to do, how much is it and what do you have to do.pay once selected ??

Sharon

Sorry to bombard with questions

[jess]

170 pts is very good and if verified would give you automatic selection from the pool. Check out this thread (http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6142) with lots of introductory info about applying. Juniper who started that thread lists the EOI fee as $300. There is also a migrant levy if you are offered PR. See her thread for more...

[TFR]

Have they said why they're offering Work To Residence and not PR via the Skilled Migrant route? Seems odd as 170 points is very high after all?

[shakyle2906]

No, no one asked much questions when i rang NZ house, just said what visa's we would be entitled to apply for and pop in post.

SHaron

[TFR]

I would do some research first and decide for yourself whether you want to apply under the WTR route or the skilled migrant route as you seem to have enough points for the latter? Once you've decided which to do, then submit the appropriate to NZIS. Hope that helps...

[Sam B]

We nearly went for the work visa route because I thought it would be quicker, but then after attending the immigration talk at the NZExpo in London in October, I decided to go for PR because they said that if you had a job offer, then you would be fast tracked anyway - and it really was v quick. I did my EOI in October, got selected straight away and we had our PR visas by late November. The main reason I decided to go this route was that it was not much more costly than the work visa route, and saved having to have the medicals twice, and also get rights to medical care etc straight away. I'd recommend it over work to residence I think. Altogether it has cost us £125 for EOI, £420 for migrant levy, £525 for application fee and the cost of medicals. Hope this helps.

[shakyle2906]

Thanks Sam, much appreciated.
We are worrying as we have the job offer and needed to get out there end Feb. We have emailed the employer out in NZ, who isnt returning to work until Monday with what we have found out over the Xmas perios, as he has never looked into this either.
Our heads are all over the place with all this info, and thinking of it logically, this would prob be better option.
As we rent, we are ok to move asap, oly have to give months notice. But, the huge bit and the thing thats causing us loads of grief is that as we have no savings,(hubby was unemployed for 2 mths just before xmas and now in a job paying half the usual salary), we have used the little 'nest egg' we were building to fulfill our dream.
Will log on to the website now i think and start filling in the online for, i believe its much cheaper if you do it this way.
I suppose that as long as we are honest with the prospective employer, and say we are taking this route, he MAY hopefully decide to wait for us, if not , then so be it.
My husbands trade, joinery, is in demand over there at mo, so from what we can gather, we should be ok for jobs. Also, a guy from Auckalnd has rang us three times thats very interested, so fingers crossed!!
Sharon

[TFR]

Just for info - it is possible for you to apply via EOI/skilled migrant category and, whilst this is being processed by NZIS, for your husband to go over on a work visa until the SM route catches you up. NZIS assured me that they could do this without any problems. Hope that helps...

[Sam B]

One of the reasons that the process was so quick for us apart from being fast tracked, was because I worked v hard to make sure that I gave NZ immigration EVERYTHING they wanted with knobs on. I did all the preparation for my ITA whilst waiting for it to arrive, and then filled it in and sent it off on the same day that it arrived. This really speeded things up too. It then took 4 weeks before I had our PR visas inour hands, but during this time I had to resist the urge to keep phoning my case worker and nagging her to hurry up! If it had taken any longer, I would have applied for a work visa, which can be done in 3 days apparently, but then I would have had to pay for this on top of the PR costs, so I didn't want to.

If you do work to residency, they told me you would have to get your medicals redone at the time of getting your PR permits in NZ and I didn't want the cost of that and I don't like x-rays, so that put me off.

However you're still going to need to find the money for all this I guess, either way.

Sam