But we will have PR sometime around Christmas time or just after.
I don't know your exact dates, but please be careful and read all the information from INZ, because PR and the right to sponsor are not the same. The first time you can get Permanent Residence is TWO years after you activated your Residence visa by arriving in NZ. The first time you can sponsor in someone from your family is when you have been living in NZ on the activated Residence visa for THREE years.
Mothers' worries don't
ever stop, in my experience - even when your children are into middle age, with careers and families of their own which they're perfectly used to managing for themselves, you still have the link that tweaks for anything that concerns them. And they get irritated if you keep commenting on their business. If your son is interested in going where there is work, and this would allow him to get on the road to being right with INZ, why discourage him? Remember any employer who would be giving him an apprenticeship would be looking out for their own hide, too. How would you be *more* worried - him out of your sight day by day, but in the same country and on the right track to getting a long-term visa so he can then support himself and legally stay, or him forced to leave NZ, with no qualifications that would allow him to get back any time soon? (Even when in due course you can sponsor him, he'll still need a job offer in NZ before he can apply.)