Changing career direction when emigrating

Christine

My husband and I are keen to emigrate to NZ and hold down high pressure jobs in UK. We have a good level of savings and are hoping to move to a slower pace of life (unfortunately less income but we know we can get by) and buy a B and B or similar upon arrival in NZ.

My question is do we apply under the skilled category where we score about 125 without a job offer in our existing fields, or do we try to apply using our new plans although we have no experience at B and Bing?

Any advice would be appreciated as we seem to be in a chicken and egg situation in that we seem really likely to get in if we get job offers, however, we do not want to do those jobs when we get there!

JCM · Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2003 7:00 pm Post subject:

Welcome aboard Christine.

The business route, such as B&B, means applying for a long term business visa. Unless you have relevant experience owning or managing a business similar to the one you plan to run in NZ, the NZIS would, sadly, not approve your application for this visa.

So we're back with Skilled Migration. It's difficult to say whether 125 will be enough to get you an invitation to apply for residence, as we've been discussing in a couple of other threads. This will all become more apparent over the next few months.

With a job offer, you would pretty much walk in.

Keep going, because most of us, once we get in, think it was worth all of the effort.

Christine · Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2003 9:31 pm Post subject:

Thanks for your help JCM.

Although we are both youngish (36 and 42) we are hoping to give up the full time day jobs, relax and do something part time together. If we get full time jobs in NZ then we still wouldn't see much of each other (just like in England) and we know we can get by with much less income.

I guess the NZ government want to encourage young workers to the country, rather than downsizers. However, we can bring quite a bit of cash in with us, we certainly would not be a burden on the state and we would work at a reasonable pace, pay our taxes and spend our money in the country.

Am I right or would they be interested in letting us in too?

JCM · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2003 9:18 pm Post subject:

Hi Christine, I think they would love you to come here but at the end of the day we, all of us, can only qualify for residence by jumping through the hoops that are put in place by the government to keep overall migration numbers manageable.

It may be an idea to try applying with 125 points to see whether you will be successful without a job offer. I really can't tell whether you would be.

On the other hand, just one of you getting work in a full time job would almost certainly enable you to achieve permanent residence here in the Skilled Migrant stream and, once this is granted, you will be free to leave the job if you are not enjoying it and do whatever you like without endangering your permanent resident status. In terms of quality of life, having just one of you working would certainly be less stressful than both working. Plus, if you want to run a small business such as a B&B, it would give the person who is not employed time to familiarise themselves with local business conditions, contacts, suppliers, advertisers, etc.

Jamie Smith · Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2004 12:36 am Post subject:

JCM's dead right so far about LTBV.

Even at 120-125 points you should get approved, as the points cluster group seem to be
160+ = all points incl job offer, should be shoe in.
150 = NZ qualified foreign born students with job offers
110-130 = no job offer but scores in bonus options OR qualified Asians with job offer but not able to claim points for work experience in a comparable country.

As there's a bit of a backlog, expect the first approvals will be higher than the norm, but once the effects of India and Asia essentially dropping out of the NZ migration market come in later this year, then NZ will not be able to meet their maximum and hence the lower points sets will get through.

If you're flush with cash apply now in case many people are just holding off to wait and see, otherwise I'd say keep an eye on things and lodge in June/July...