Wherein I walk you through the nine page application, page by page, so you know what to expect and what you’ll need to gather together ahead of time. This post is for that one person who may or may not ever stumble upon this blog while googling what the PNZerRV application looks like (you’re welcome, internet stranger). For everyone else: proceed at your own risk of potential abject disinterest.
(Because I promised to never post without photos, please enjoy this brief interlude):
Date I applied: January 7, 2024
Cost: $5,360 NZD
Processing time: 80% of these types of visas are decided upon within 7 months.
TIP: You can start this application at any time and save your progress as you go. I highly recommend starting well in advance of the time you plan to submit, especially when it comes to gathering things like letters of support from friends and family and finding a notary.
Page 1: “Identity and Contact“
Basic information about you: full name, date/place of birth, passport number, social security number, phone number, current address, most recent address in your home country, and a few other easy questions.
Page 2: “Visa Details“
What kind of visa you are applying for (that is, are you the partner of, or the child of, the “support person” (aka the person supporting this visa application). It asks if this support person is a New Zealand citizen/resident/expat, and also asks if you are currently living together and have been for 12+ months, which is a requirement for this visa.
Page 3: “Supporting Person Details“
Basic information about your supporting person. Their full name, date/place of birth, passport number, and a few other easy fill-in-the-blank type of questions.
Page 4: “Additional Applicant Details“
Asks you if there will be additional applicants (i.e. a child); a quick Yes/No question.
Page 5: “Principle Applicant’s Health Details“
This has a big block of Y/N health-related questions such as “Do you have tuberculosis,” “Do you require renal dialysis,” “Do you require hospital care,” “Are you pregnant,” etc. It asks you to list any country you’ve lived in for 3+ months during the last 5 years and then asks if you submitted a general medical exam and chest x-ray on your prior visa application, and, if so, were they done within the last 36 months (if not, they will very likely make you get new ones done).
Page 6: “Principle Applicant’s Character Details“
A long list of Y/N questions related to any criminal background activities you may have. My favorite questions are “In any county, including New Zealand, are you currently under investigation, wanted for questioning, or facing charges for any offense?” and “Do you have an outstanding arrest warrant in any county, including New Zealand?”. I’m curious to know, considering that you are giving them your current address, SSN, photo, passport information, and the names and addresses of your parent and siblings, if anyone has actually ever answered “Yes” to any of these.
It also asks if you’ve provided a police certificate from your country within the last 24 months (yes, I have. I talked about the process of getting it here).
Here’s a list of the questions:
Page 7: “Family Details”
They want to know the names, addresses, dates of birth, partnership/marital status, occupation, citizenship, and country of birth for your parents and siblings (living or not).
Page 8: “Apply on Behalf/Assist“
Asks if you are completing the application on behalf of someone else, and if you received assistance from an immigration advisor (a quick Yes/No).
Page 9: “Upload Documents”
Here’s where you upload all the documents they require, as well as ALL the documents you’re not required to submit but absolutely 100% should submit. Uploads must not exceed 10 MB, and if you have multiple things to submit that all fall under the same category, combine them into one PDF.
Let’s cover the required documents first. You’ll need to upload a photo of your passport, a passport-style headshot, your birth certificate, and your” ID card” (this one is optional, but I uploaded my social security number card). If you’ve had your required medical exam, you enter your eMedical reference number.
- “Evidence that your relationship is genuine and stable” (I uploaded the letters that my mom, dad, and sister wrote, combining them into one PDF).
- “Evidence that you have been living with your partner for more than 12 months” (we used a letter from our landlord).
- “Timeline of Partnership” This part of the application took me far and away the most time (I wrote a blog entry about my process of writing it here). Because I’d already completed the timeline through March 2024–when I applied for my partner work visa–I just needed to pick up where I left off and finish out 2024 with significant events and milestones in our partnership, things like when he took me to visit his hometown for the first time, when we spent the day together edxploring Wellington, and when he finally got to meet my family and friends in the States. When I first started compiling the relationship timeline about a year ago, I realized pretty quickly that it was going to be long; I can’t not tell a story if there’s a story there to tell. What I ended up doing, for better or for worse, was to submit an extremely long document that starts off by explaining that pages 1-3 were the abridged partnership timeline of simple dates and events for brevity’s sake, but if the person reading this had time, pages 4-16 were where the real story was.
- “Evidence that your partner is a New Zealand citizen” (I uploaded a photo of Stu’s passport).
- The completed “Partnership Support Form for Residence (Form NZ 1178).” (Stu had to fill this one out and get it notarized. The form asks for much of the same information I’d already given them, such as full name, date/place of birth, address, etc).
That’s all of the required information. Technically, you can stop here, proceed to the next page, enter your credit card details, and submit your application.
But from everything I’ve read and everyone I’ve talked to, you don’t want to do that. You want to give them a whole lot more. In fact, I possibly gave them too much more; the dropdown list of things you can give them is so vast that I figured “why not!”. Apologies to the immigration officer assigned to my case. 😬
So after you have satisfied all of the required uploads and it says “Are there any other documents you wish to provide in support of your application?”, you’re going to say HELL YES THERE ARE!
Here is the full dropdown menu of options for things you can provide them with to lend more weight to your application:
Wait, there’s more…
I have no idea what some of these mean (“Plans in New Zealand”?) and some of them don’t apply to me (“Australian passport”, Right to remove a child”).
But I did have things I could upload that fell under some of these categories. Here are the categories I used and what I uploaded under said category:
Genuine and stable partnership evidence (I uploaded each of these as its own PDF since they are separate items):
* Letters of Support from our family and friends (all in one PDF). I asked my friends and family back home to write us letters, since they had now met Stu and seen us together as a couple, and then I asked everyone who had written us letters of support for my first visa to update those letters for me.
* A photo timeline I created in Canva. It starts with the very first photo we ever took together and ends with our visit to see his sister last week. It’s 23 pages of well-laid-out and captioned/dated selfies, social media posts (complete with all the likes and comments), pictures we’ve taken of ourselves at concerts, pictures our friends have taken of us at concerts, pictures with the friends who took pictures of us at concerts, pictures of me and the kids, pictures of our trip to the States last October, pictures of Stu with my family. When I began adding fun clip art like guitars and pumpkins, I realized I was back in middle school doing some lavishly illustrated (and totally unnecessary) picture to accompany a one-page book report and that I might be seen as a sycophant vying to be “Immigration Officer’s pet” (as opposed to teacher’s pet). I left the guitar and pumpkin clip art but didn’t add anything else.
* Our WhatsApp chat history. I downloaded our nearly five-year correspondence (minus photos) and then paid 99 cents for PDF Guru to compress that massive 12.86 GB file into a PDF small enough to upload. (And then you have to cancel the 7 day free trial before you start paying for PDF Guru).
Police certificate: I uploaded a copy of my squeaky clean NZ background check, which I requested here. You fill out and sign a very brief form, upload it, and they email you the results within a week (there’s no cost associated with this). Again, I’ll emphasize that at no point had I been asked to provide a NZ background check to Immigration, but since it was free and easy I thought it wouldn’t hurt.
Evidence of Shared Financial Dependency: Screen shots of our joint BNZ account
Evidence of funds: Screen shot of my personal BNZ checking and savings accounts
Evidence of financial dependency: Screen shots of our utility account with both of our names on them, as well as screen shots of every time my half of the rent came out of my account and into his.
Driver’s license: I uploaded photos of my Massachusetts and NZ driver’s licenses
Evidence of employment and business being undertaken. I uploaded screenshots of my paystubs for my landscaping job
Records of previous travel: Screen shots of receipts for all of our flights to and from the US (with our names on them), as well as Air BnB receipts from our travels around New England
Once you have finished uploading everything you feel will help Immigration make a positive determination on your application, you save your progress, go back to page 1, and neurotically proofread the whole nine pages. And then you click “Next,” check a box saying that this was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and enter your credit card number to pay them a s**tload of money. A few days later you will receive an automated email saying they’ve received your application and will be in touch if they need more information. Otherwise, you will be notified when they have made a decision on your application.
