xpatadventure

Hello,

We've been approved and were told that we have 12 months to migrate to NZ. We didn't expect to get approval too soon (2 and half months after they received our application documents).

My question:

Does anyone ever request NZ immigration to extend their arrival date of longer than 12 months?

Is there a possibility that they will/will not approve for this?

My children are in the middle of the school year and my husband prefers to finish his work contract to avoid penalties. I wonder if these reasons would help them to give us our visa extension.

Any comments please......

Thanks

BevK

Hi, congratulations on getting your visa. I may wrong with this, and I'm sure someone on here will correct me if I'm wrong, but once you have been approved, you have 6 months to send in your passports with the migrant levy fee and then 12 months from then. So 18 months in total. Cant be a 100% certain as I'm still waiting approval for mine. Good luck!!!

nicorsts1

We were approved back in May and given 6 months to pay the migrant levy which we've just done. We should get our passports back with pr visa's and have 12 months from the date of issue to get over.
We only decided not to pay the migrant levy fee with ITA application so we could take advantage of the 18 month period if we needed to, so i guess if you have'nt paid the migrant levy yet then you should be ok for upto 18 months.

Paul n Dani

rogercruse

Correct.

You have up to six months to get the stickers and then up to twelve months to get to NZ.

You could in theory arrive in NZ go through immigration and then get the next flight out.

xpatadventure

Thanks for your valuable info. Rogercruse has a very interesting point. Unfortunately, it will cost us a fortune for a family of 4

I am sorry not to mention clearly. I meant requesting an extension of more than 18 months from the date of approval. I know this sounds like a long time but we have plans for 2 years before being able to settling down to NZ.

Any thought or comments on this?

Thank you.

chippy64

Sorry but NZIS will not extend under any circumstances. I asked them cos we haven't sold the house and needed the proceeds to make the full move.
In the end, a very good friend loaned us (me, OH and 2 boys aged 19 and 17) the fare money to Auckland. We left UK on 1st Oct, arrived 3rd and then my youngest and I left NZ 6thOct and arrived back in UK on 7th!
I have left OH and oldest son out there to work and they will send money back home to help me until house sells.
Very difficult decisision and horrible leaving them but it was that or lose our visas. Going on that short trip helped me, as it has been 3 years since I last went there and think I needed to be reminded of why we wanted to live in NZ.
Best of luck with youe future plans, whatever they turn out to be!