My family hopes to have our visas by early January, and we will head to New Zealand soon thereafter. We're happy to be patient with the application process, but I am pregnant, due in early February. My obstetrician has said I can fly until January 12th.
If we do not have our visas by then, my husband will still move to New Zealand to start his job when his visa arrives, and I'll stay in the States with my two daughters until the newborn arrives. (We don't have a name. To lesson confusion, I'll call her "Baby")
So, here is my question: do I have to wait for Baby's visa before we can join my husband? Or can I take all my children to New Zealand and apply for Baby's visa from within the country?
Obviously, from the embassy's perspective, there's no urgency to a newborn's visitor visa. Probably the soonest we can procure a passport for Baby is late February. Even if I can apply for the visa immediately, it could be May or later before the visa is processed.
My current thinking is that we could buy Baby a round-trip flight and let her enter the country as a tourist. While in NZ, we could apply for Baby's visitor visa for the duration of my husband's job.
Is that legal? Is this going to anger the Immigration gods? I appreciate any and all advice here. I really don't want to have my family split apart for five months, and I'm not sure what else to do.