Yes, New Zealand PR has a lot of rights. Almost as many rights that I have as a British Citizen born outside the UK (my only passport from birth to now).
It's been my dream for the past 10 years to move to New Zealand, and thank God, I was finally granted a Resident visa in May 2021. If you're thinking about moving here though, please don't get your hopes up too high - the application process is very slow and it would've been faster if I'd moved elsewhere. People here have been wonderful, but the government's approach has been hostile to migrants, and I came close to despair several times on the long journey here.
November 2011 - February 2012 Working Holiday visa. Summer job at FPH.
early 2014 - Wanting to return, Skilled Migrant Category visa requires me to get "2 years continuous relevant work experience". Moved to Taiwan (an approved labour market), worked for a microSD manufacturer.
mid-2016 - NZ changes rules to "3 years continuous relevant work experience". Political problems in UK and US cause mass exodus of English-speaking people to NZ, Canada, Australia. Wait times start climbing.
mid-2017 - NZ changes rules to "3 years and a minimum salary of $70k"
mid-2018 - Left Taiwan. Applying for jobs remotely, getting nowhere. Parents supported me to come to NZ and look for a job.
Feb 2019 - Applied for Skilled Migrant Category resident visa.
May 2019 - Left, waited 6 months for temporary work visa to be processed. Working remotely, unpaid, for IoT startup in Auckland. Living in hostels, girlfriend's family in Taiwan, parents in France. Financially supported by parents.
Nov 2019 - Dec 2020 - working in North Shore, actually getting paid! Company already prepared for remote work, thankfully. But not paid every month because the company was running out of money. Began asking around for other jobs.
October 2020 - Case officer assigned to SMC visa application. Hired McVeagh Fleming lawyers to buy me time so I could try to get another job.
January 2021 - Started new job at FPH!
February 2021 - Resident visa approved!
May 2021 - Resident visa issued. After applying, the processing time took 2 years 5 months.
In theory, I could now have a family! My British passport can't be passed on to future kids, but my NZ Resident status should allow children born here to become citizens. However, it is not possible for my girlfriend to join me from Taiwan. It wouldn't help to get married - partnership visas would requires us to live together for over a year (which is obviously not possible these days). Every day my mind wonders whether it's still worth waiting, then every night we chat, and my heart falls in love with her all over again. She's stood firm through so many ups and downs, how could I turn away from that commitment now? She's wonderful, and worth waiting for, even if I never know when or if that day will come.
I agree. He seems to have done absolutely nothing. Every month it's the same statement, "we're looking into it". (And I actually like most of what this government has done.)
My mate has worked here something like 4-5 years now, still on work visa.
This lockdown Auckland immigration office was shut so his visa wasn’t renewed. Basically has to leave the country if immi doesn’t come up with something. All because NZ’ers have exemption for travel and brought back a fucking delta strain.
I'm a NZer and not a doomer at all, and certainly not compared to what's happening elsewhere.
It seems to me NZ's main problems are ones it has had for a long time (housing, inequality, gangs, drugs), some of them are getting better (tech industry), and the stuff I like is still good (tramping, food, environment, sane politics).
Wages for local NZ companies are mostly bad. In spite of that, we are breeding more and more successful companies for reasons I can only guess at. You have a much better chance of finding interesting work than used to be the case.
But the untold story of tech work in NZ is that working remotely for good wages is rapidly getting easier. I started the Mozilla NZ office in 2007 and we were paid adequately, because back then HR didn't have a firm "local cost of labour" policy. Since then I've seen friends find remote work at other companies to get paid a lot more than they would locally for the same job. Zapier is a good one. We can all see that remote work is trending steeply upward in general; it doesn't always translate into location-insensitive pay policies, but sometimes it does.
"everything I dislike about it" is not a short list for me either, but that means there's more that we can fix!
Canadians have a reputation for saying "sorry", let's give NZ a reputation for saying "thank you".
If I stayed in Switzerland (where I was born, but have no citizenship because parents weren't resident), I would have to join the army and kill foreigners. Same in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Austria... many otherwise nice countries still apply conscription, and I'm a pacifist.
People who want to make more money choose to move away to Australia, London, or California. Likewise in Kaohsiung, career-minded people move to Taipei or Hong Kong. The Immigration department is trying to alter that by preferentially issuing visas to rich people, but that's not how this works - it'll just increase inequality, and the government won't even make more money in taxes because most rich people find loopholes and tax havens anyway.
People who choose to move to New Zealand usually have something more worthwhile in life to hope for :)
What foreigners are people in the Swiss or Taiwanese army killing!?
If you move to NZ, I hope you're earning a lot of money. Everything is expensive. Housing especially - though you're used to that to an extent if you know Taipei.
many otherwise nice countries still apply conscription
It may be the case that it is a necessary condition for remaining a nice country. At least if their neighbors aren't always so nice.
Most civilized countries with universal conscription allow you to do unarmed service (military support tasks) or civil service. In addition there's usually plenty of wiggle room to avoid the conscription altogether: health reasons (or excuses), being a member of certain religions, delaying/avoiding/hiding, or just plain refusing.
Comments
Yes, New Zealand PR has a lot of rights. Almost as many rights that I have as a British Citizen born outside the UK (my only passport from birth to now).
It's been my dream for the past 10 years to move to New Zealand, and thank God, I was finally granted a Resident visa in May 2021. If you're thinking about moving here though, please don't get your hopes up too high - the application process is very slow and it would've been faster if I'd moved elsewhere. People here have been wonderful, but the government's approach has been hostile to migrants, and I came close to despair several times on the long journey here.
November 2011 - February 2012 Working Holiday visa. Summer job at FPH.
early 2014 - Wanting to return, Skilled Migrant Category visa requires me to get "2 years continuous relevant work experience". Moved to Taiwan (an approved labour market), worked for a microSD manufacturer.
mid-2016 - NZ changes rules to "3 years continuous relevant work experience". Political problems in UK and US cause mass exodus of English-speaking people to NZ, Canada, Australia. Wait times start climbing.
mid-2017 - NZ changes rules to "3 years and a minimum salary of $70k"
mid-2018 - Left Taiwan. Applying for jobs remotely, getting nowhere. Parents supported me to come to NZ and look for a job.
Feb 2019 - Applied for Skilled Migrant Category resident visa.
May 2019 - Left, waited 6 months for temporary work visa to be processed. Working remotely, unpaid, for IoT startup in Auckland. Living in hostels, girlfriend's family in Taiwan, parents in France. Financially supported by parents.
Nov 2019 - Dec 2020 - working in North Shore, actually getting paid! Company already prepared for remote work, thankfully. But not paid every month because the company was running out of money. Began asking around for other jobs.
October 2020 - Case officer assigned to SMC visa application. Hired McVeagh Fleming lawyers to buy me time so I could try to get another job.
January 2021 - Started new job at FPH!
February 2021 - Resident visa approved!
May 2021 - Resident visa issued. After applying, the processing time took 2 years 5 months.
In theory, I could now have a family! My British passport can't be passed on to future kids, but my NZ Resident status should allow children born here to become citizens. However, it is not possible for my girlfriend to join me from Taiwan. It wouldn't help to get married - partnership visas would requires us to live together for over a year (which is obviously not possible these days). Every day my mind wonders whether it's still worth waiting, then every night we chat, and my heart falls in love with her all over again. She's stood firm through so many ups and downs, how could I turn away from that commitment now? She's wonderful, and worth waiting for, even if I never know when or if that day will come.
You are not the only one waiting far too long.
The NZ governments approach to immigration during the Covid period is disappointing.
Kris Faafoi is a disgrace and should step down.
I'm from NZ but I know other families forced to separate due to the cruel decision to keep postponing resident applications.
I agree. He seems to have done absolutely nothing. Every month it's the same statement, "we're looking into it". (And I actually like most of what this government has done.)
My mate has worked here something like 4-5 years now, still on work visa.
This lockdown Auckland immigration office was shut so his visa wasn’t renewed. Basically has to leave the country if immi doesn’t come up with something. All because NZ’ers have exemption for travel and brought back a fucking delta strain.
what's worse is during the Auckland lockdown they effectively shut down for 6 weeks so nothing was processed.
Why?
I'm a real doomer when it comes to NZ. Everything I liked about it is disappearing and everything I dislike about it gets worse.
I'm a NZer and not a doomer at all, and certainly not compared to what's happening elsewhere.
It seems to me NZ's main problems are ones it has had for a long time (housing, inequality, gangs, drugs), some of them are getting better (tech industry), and the stuff I like is still good (tramping, food, environment, sane politics).
What sort of tech wages do you see here?
Wages for local NZ companies are mostly bad. In spite of that, we are breeding more and more successful companies for reasons I can only guess at. You have a much better chance of finding interesting work than used to be the case.
But the untold story of tech work in NZ is that working remotely for good wages is rapidly getting easier. I started the Mozilla NZ office in 2007 and we were paid adequately, because back then HR didn't have a firm "local cost of labour" policy. Since then I've seen friends find remote work at other companies to get paid a lot more than they would locally for the same job. Zapier is a good one. We can all see that remote work is trending steeply upward in general; it doesn't always translate into location-insensitive pay policies, but sometimes it does.
"everything I dislike about it" is not a short list for me either, but that means there's more that we can fix!
Canadians have a reputation for saying "sorry", let's give NZ a reputation for saying "thank you".
If I stayed in Switzerland (where I was born, but have no citizenship because parents weren't resident), I would have to join the army and kill foreigners. Same in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Austria... many otherwise nice countries still apply conscription, and I'm a pacifist.
People who want to make more money choose to move away to Australia, London, or California. Likewise in Kaohsiung, career-minded people move to Taipei or Hong Kong. The Immigration department is trying to alter that by preferentially issuing visas to rich people, but that's not how this works - it'll just increase inequality, and the government won't even make more money in taxes because most rich people find loopholes and tax havens anyway.
People who choose to move to New Zealand usually have something more worthwhile in life to hope for :)
What foreigners are people in the Swiss or Taiwanese army killing!?
If you move to NZ, I hope you're earning a lot of money. Everything is expensive. Housing especially - though you're used to that to an extent if you know Taipei.
I was in Kaohsiung, where my rent was once as low as 3500 NTD per month = 45 NZD per week :D
Here in Auckland I'm currently paying 130 NZD per week for a room in a house shared with 3 others, about 15 mins bike ride from the office.
I had a lovely time in Kaohsiung. I thought it was the most beautiful city in the country by far, much nicer than Taipei.
Heard the pollution is pretty bad though. And the driving was even worse than Taipei.
It may be the case that it is a necessary condition for remaining a nice country. At least if their neighbors aren't always so nice.
Most civilized countries with universal conscription allow you to do unarmed service (military support tasks) or civil service. In addition there's usually plenty of wiggle room to avoid the conscription altogether: health reasons (or excuses), being a member of certain religions, delaying/avoiding/hiding, or just plain refusing.
This sounds like my experience as an Australian. I'm not really sure where else I'd go, though.
You could try regional Australia, like Hobart, or Western Australia:D
Everyone is a doomer about their own country. Grass is always greener on the other side.