jeffrey.dalton

Hello All,
Just dropping a line to say hello to the forum. Our family immigrated back in November of 2011 from the USA and are truly loving the NZ life. We are up in Kerikeri in the the far north.

For anyone reading this sitting at your computer at 3:00am in the morning reading the convoluted Visa application instructions: I can say in our experience all the stress, waiting, planning, worrying, saving, moments of insanity, were all worth it and we would gladly do it all again to get to live in New Zealand.

Cheers,
Jeffrey

BEVS

Kia Ora again and welcome to this wee NZ forum..

A real soz that you didn't find us all earlier , as the NZIS Immy process ain't all that difficult really. You just need to know your forms , have some patience & hope you don't fall foul of Immy Finger .

Welcome again and we will look forward to you joining our wee community.

oldbull

Hi Jeffery,
We are in the process now!!!!
and its messages like yours that are good to hear thank you,.
regards Chris

BEVS

Goodness me. Where have you been all this time?. There have been so many messages on here about the immy process & other stuff. You dropped from view.

Am really looking forward to this chappy joining in with the community and offering all sorts of info and help with the rest of us.

Browner_

do you think maybe this happy clappy has a self-interest in promoting his book?

BEVS

Dunno. The process isn't all that hard TBH is it, so rather hoping he will simply join in & find all those good things that were missing & he struggled with before he/they found us.

I do know that Oldbull pertains to be in the same trade as me & husband but still seems to be in the process. Job offer may be the crux of the matter there + getting quals recognised via PGDB.

GingerBiscuit

This is encouraging :-)

jeffrey.dalton

I suppose being happy clappy is more of a rarity on expat forums but is honestly what we have found in NZ. When we were researching from the USA we found it difficult to find good information and there was a lot of complaining and negativity to read through in forums to try to get a sense of what was ahead of us. I suppose that tends to be the trend in online places where people can be anonymous, the complaints and negative stuff tends to be the loudest.

We came on a Long Term Business Visa which appears to be a less traveled road so we probably had a different experience than many. I can see how trying to find a job here would be a tough road as the country is small and the economy has been wrecked from the 2008 meltdown. What is interesting is we had been told in many forum threads that the LTBV path was risky and terribly difficult. In reality the door is pretty wide open for some kinds of business. I run a very small web development consulting business (small as in just me) that services clients in the USA. This turned out to make the INZ happy because to do this work from NZ makes it a technology exporting services business so we started a business in NZ that basically just does the same thing and works for my clients in the US. Is still just me consulting but with a business here and maintaining my business in the US as the prime contractor. The business setup process literally took a hour online once we arrived and qualified our visa from the initial 9 months to the full three years. The reason I point this out is I saw many people asking about IT consulting from NZ back to the UK and the common answer was that it isn't possible and that you need a job here. The problem is that answer came from people who didn't try to setup a consulting business in NZ that would service the home country.

As far as questioning if I want to promote my book I would be honest and say yah I want to promote our book (why write a book and not tell people about it), but with the caveat that it isn't my day job. I wrote it because we thought it would help other immigrants coming after us and we thought it might help New Zealand a bit since NZ does such a poor job of informing new immigrants of the real day to day story of coming here. I read the rules on signatures and all that pretty darn carefully so hope it isn't offensive to have a link in there.

I am happy to try to answer folks questions on here as I remember all to well how far away NZ feels when you are trying to learn about it online.

mcgarnagle

Positivity of any kind will not be tolerated on this forum!

BEVS

Daft apporth.

Go and have a punt on this thread and do a bit of light reading here .