Activating residency -conditions?

[VickiK]

Hello everyone,

Great to be back on here I've found this forum invaluable as a source of advice.

We were granted residency just over a month ago now (yay!) and my husband is currently in the process of trying to find work in NZ.

He's not having much luck so far and being told the jobs market in his industry is slow post recession, but bizarrely he has a lot of interest from people in Australia.

If he secures a job in Australia we will probably go there in the short term and look to make the move to NZ from there. How would we go about activating our residency visas and what do we need to do to ensure we don't lose them -so what criteria do we have to meet to ensure the visas are still valid?

In an ideal world we would go straight to NZ as that's where we want to be long-term but if the jobs aren't there it makes sense to move to Australia in the short term and keep trying to find work in NZ.

Thanks

[JandM]

As an aside, first - do you already have residency for Australia, or how soon could you look to get a work permit for that country?

About your visas for NZ. You have, from the date of offer, six months to pay the Migrant Levy, and send in your passports to have the blue stickers (Residence visas) put in. From that date (application of the stickers), you have 12 months to arrive in NZ and activate the stickers by presenting them at Immigration upon arrival. This date is an absolute, so be sure to allow some leeway in your travel plans, or in case of late arrival, the visas could lapse.

Once a visa is activated, it has two years' travel conditions attached to it, i.e. during that time you can freely go in and out of the country. But, since Residence visas are granted with the intention of the person being resident, sooner or later you have to 'establish commitment to NZ'. After two years, a resident who has done this can have their visa converted to Permanent Residence, but if you're not there in the country, you won't have done it yet. Really the situation boils down to you needing to be back in NZ, intending to stay and establish residency, before the two years are up. Here are links to the pages about these topics. http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migra...nts/nextsteps/ http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migra...quirements.htm http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migra...quirements.htm

[VickiK]

Thanks JandM - if my husband gets the job in Australia they will sponsor him on a 457 which allows us to be there temporarily (usually for up to 4 years) with the option to make permanent at the end of that. But we really want to be in NZ longer term so are trying to keep all options open.