Just hoping someone out there will be able to guide me slightly on this one please!

Well, we are one of the 'old queue' applicants from Oct 2007 who is still waiting to be processed. When we applied, the difficult decision was do we go for Canada or NZ - and stupidly enough, we went for Canada!! So, as you all know the old applicants are just being put further and further behind and now they are saying it will be another 2 yrs AT LEAST until we get looked at so we have finally come to the conclusion that we have to turn to Plan B - apply for PR in NZ. We have no problems with points as hubby is on the shortage list and juding by theirs stats, application should be processed in about 6 months!!

I'm getting to the point now...Does anyone know, if we DO get PR for NZ in the next year or so, will this affect our application for Canada in anyway?

We are still reluctant to withdraw our app for Canada and happy to leave it there until whenever the processing time comes as its not costing us anything - and I have this horrible feeling that if we do withdraw, that knowing our luck things will speed up! Our first choice is still Canada but feel that we have to move on in life and do whatever feels right now and by applying for NZ, we may then have choices as who knows what lies in store for any of us..

If anybody can shed any light on this one, will be grateful

well apologies if this is rather obvious but you can't be a PR of 2 places at once, at some stage you would have to choose, if it was me I would leave the Canadian app as is (maybe try a new route e.g. pull out all the stops to get a job offer?), its your 1st choice after all, and by all means apply simultaneously for NZ as a 2nd choice, nothing wrong with that- can't put a big chunk of your lives on hold indefinitely.

Go through the process with both. Although you will have to decide at some point you may be able to hold PR for both countries for a short time (no idea what the residency reqs are for NZ, but Canada's 2/5 year rule allows for it).

Don't feel guilty for gaming the immigration system of the countries you are looking at.

Thanks for the replies.

Ideally we would like to hold out for Canada but the speed they are taking I cant help thinking they are just leaving people in the queue to get old so they then fail the medicals....then by then we will be WAY past it to go anywhere!!

Alan2005 - thats what I was hoping someone would say! Don't want to spend money for the sake of it but on the other hand did not want to go ahead with NZ then find out it jeopardises Canada in someway if we decide not to activate their PR anyway when the time comes. Funnily enough, I did have this guilt feeling when we thought of plan B but I shouldn't think for one minute any country would feel guilty about leaving us on hold for sooooo long...

Decisions eh.....