Category: Immigration

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So, now what?



I want to include photos in all of my blog posts, so although this is a complete non sequitur, please enjoy this picture I took a few weeks ago of the Southern Lights (Aurora Australis). It was unreal.


Back to our regularly scheduled blog post.

A few people have asked me what happens next with my visa, so I thought I’d lay it all out for everyone here.

My Work Visa is valid until May 21, 2025 (one year from the date of issue). Partner of a New Zealander Work Visas are good for 1-2 years depending on how long you and your partner have been living together. If you’ve been living together for fewer than twelve months (as is our case), the visa is good for one year.

Sometime around February/March 2025, I will apply for a Partner of a New Zealander Resident Visa (processing time: 80% within 9 months, 20% within 12 months), since we will have at that point been living together for more than 12 months (January 2024-January 2025). At that time I will also resubmit my Work Visa, as I need to maintain that until the Resident one is approved. During the 9-12 months that I’m waiting for my Resident Visa to come through, I cannot leave the country or else I have to restart that whole process. This 9-12 months will be the longest time frame during which I’m not allowed to come home.

Once granted the Resident Visa, it is valid for two years, during which I can continue to work (and study) here, as well as come and go from the country as I wish.

Towards the end of those two years, I can apply for a Permanent Resident Visa. Processing time: 80% within 3 weeks. You must have held your Resident Visa for at least 2 years when you apply. The difference between the Resident and Permanent Resident visas is that Resident Visas have travel conditions that only allow you to re-enter New Zealand as a resident for those two years, whereas a Permanent Resident Visa allows indefinite re-entry to New Zealand. If I am granted a Permanent Resident Visa it will, as the name suggests, allow me to live and work in NZ, coming and going whenever I wan to, forever, which is my goal.

After five years of being in NZ on the Permanent Resident Visa–so long as I have spent 240 days of each of those five years living in NZ–I am eligible, if I so choose, to apply for Citizenship, which would give me a New Zealand passport. The U.S. allows dual citizenship, so I will still legally be American and won’t have to surrender my passport.


Approximate timeline breakdown:

February/March 2025, apply for Resident Visa
November 2025-March 2026, Resident Visa should come through 🤞🏼
October 2027-February 2028, apply for Permanent Resident Visa
November 2027-March 2028, Permanent Resident Visa should come through 🤞🏼
November 2032-March 2033, if all goes as planned, I will be eligible for New Zealand Citizenship.

Oh, I also wanted to mention that Immigration did indeed require me to get a psychiatric exam because of the medications I’m on. I had anticipated this happening, so I went ahead and booked an appointment. And I’m glad I did, because they were booked out two months and my entire visa was waiting on that exam. I drove to Auckland (5 hours round trip) and met with a psychiatrist for 90 minutes to the tune of $600 NZD ($370 USD). He was very friendly and kind and told me to just call him “Dr. Karim,” which I thought was super nice of him until I later found out that his name is Dr. Karim Abdelrahaman Nabil Mohamed Aly Salem (yes, really). As irritated as I was when I first found out about the unexpected expense and hassle of a psych exam, I also found out that the only way for me to have my local clinic refill my medications here is for me to meet with a psychiatrist, so I would have had to do it anyway. Dr. Karim wrote a letter to Immigration on my behalf, and less than a month later, my visa came through. 😊

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GUESS WHAT I GOT??? (Visa Update #6)


Two things of significance happened today.

1. I learned that I am not the sort of person who can call two of my closest friends out of the blue and go “GUESS WHAT I GOT???”, because apparently I’m enough of a wild card that even my sister and my significant other were so utterly perplexed that they ventured tentative speculations ranging from “a pet?” to “a tattoo?” to “a kitten or a puppy?” to “a kitten and a puppy?”. I assumed it would have been obvious what I’d just gotten that I was so damned excited about, but to be fair, I did almost pick up a cat on the side of the road last week and bring it home to live with us, so it’s entirely within the scope of possibility that I could be calling my sister and/or significant other to tell them that I’d just kidnapped someone’s cat and gotten its likeness tattooed on my arm.
In actuality, I was calling to tell them that…

2. I got my Partner of a New Zealander Work Visa!!!!

Yep! I am now allowed to legally work and live in New Zealand for one year. ☺️

I was pulling weeds out of hundreds of potted plants this afternoon–one of the assortment of volunteer jobs that have kept me busy while I’ve been treading the water of the visa waiting game–when an email came through my phone from “[email protected],” which I almost ignored because what the hell is that. But the subject line caught my eye: “Your Communication with Immigration New Zealand.”

Immigration. OMG. Could it be…?? I mean; the turnaround time was supposed to be 11 weeks and it’s been 9 weeks, so….

The body of the email just stated my name, date of birth, client number, and application type, casually adding “Attached to this message is a letter about your application with Immigration New Zealand.”

OMGOMGOMG…..

I had to read it several times to make sure I had, in fact, been granted the visa. I was honestly confused by the lack of exclamation points. Despite this being a piece of formal, legal correspondence on Immigration letterhead, I strongly felt that there should have been at least seven exclamation points scattered throughout the document. But it definitely said the words “approval” and “approved,” the former in bold, which I took as Immigration’s way of giving me a secret little thumbs up.

The very first person I told is the extremely funny Australian woman who works at the nursery, who happened to be weeding next to me when the email came in. After responding with enthusiasm and a bunch of s**t yeah!!s and f**k yeah!!s followed by a good on you!!, she asked if I was allowed to work any job in New Zealand. I told her I’m not allowed to work as a prostitute and she said “Awwww. All that hard work and you can’t even follow your dreams”. 🤣

(That’s actually true. Sex work is legal here in NZ, but it specifically states in the fine print of my visa that I am not allowed to engage in prostitution).

What happens next, you ask? Well; I find a job. What kind of job do I want, you ask? That’s an excellent question, and I’ll let you know when I figure that out. For now, the world is my (non-sex-work) oyster. I am utterly delighted and immensely relieved. It has been a celebratory night in our house, a night filled with flowers and chocolate and lots and lots of exclamations of joy when one or the other of us are hit by the realization all over again that I actually got my visa!!

I’d like to extend a massive thank you to all of our friends who wrote letters on our behalf–really beautiful, heartfelt letters–and to my family and friends back home for having always encouraged me to live in my own wild, weird way, to the point where a phone call out of the blue asking “Guess what I got??” leaves you with absolutely not a single goddamned clue. ☺️

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Visa Update #5: Interim Visa Granted!

Keep those champagne bottles corked; this isn’t THE visa that I just applied for. This just means that my case has been assigned to an Immigration Officer who has determined that yes, I provided them with all of the documents they need and that yes, I can now remain in New Zealand for six months until they make a decision. It doesn’t mean they won’t be contacting me with questions or asking me for more information once they actually begin reviewing my application in depth, but it’s still a relief knowing that I’m rubber-stamped to stay here in the meantime. And it feels especially good because a year ago today, I was weeping into my suitcase as I packed to fly home to the States 24 hours later, not to return to NZ for ten whole months. There shall be no suitcase-packing today! (Also hopefully no crying 😆).

The basic parameters of my Interim Visa are that I do not work (duh) and that I don’t leave the country or else the visa is nullified and I have to start all over again.

Current processing time for the Partner of a New Zealander Work Visa is 11 weeks. Stay tuned. 😊

For those of you keeping track: I submitted my visa application at 5:30 PM on Friday, March 22 and this email from Immigration was in my inbox when I woke up on Wednesday, March 27.