Hello hello!
First of all I would like to say I am SO glad to have found this forum with so many others in similar situations.
I'm in panic mode at the minute, as it's finally hit home that my two year Youth Mobility Scheme visa expires in two months and I'm going to be leaving my partner behind in the UK. He isn't going to be able to come with me right away, but the plan is for him to come along later in this year with a couple of friends who want to holiday (or possibly have a working holiday) in NZ.
Like most people here I'm concerned about our evidence and am questioning whether it would be better for him to enter NZ on a Working Holiday Visa to accumulate a bit more evidence. Our strongest evidence (albeit still not anywhere near iron clad) is from the past year, with the previous year having much weaker evidence. As with most genuine relationships we weren't concerning ourselves with collecting evidence until far too late, suddenly kicking myself for chucking out old bills, christmas cards, plane tickets and not taking more pictures. Grr!
If we don't opt for the Working Holiday, we'd look at taking on the Partner-based Work Visa rather than going straight to the residency. I assume that that will be a little less strict than going for residency, and he hasn't been in NZ for any great length of time (only a three month holiday) so I'm wary of going to all that effort to get him residency just to have him hate living there!
We have also considered him entering on a visitor's visa to accumulate another few months of evidence and also so he can apply for the Spouse Working Visa while we're living together, have people had much success with this? I feel like it's a bit frantic with the time frames and I'm not sure how much evidence we'll be able to scrape together in that time, but him being unable to work wouldn't be too much of an issue. I'm just so unsure. :S
My key questions are:
~ Is the UK Working Holiday Visa Scheme able to be extended/swapped to a Partner Residency?
I've seen a few threads here where people do seem to have done this and I know the UK equivalent YMS can certainly be extended to such a visa, but I want to be doubly sure as I can't find any kind of official statement online about whether or not this can be done in NZ.
Would him putting his relationship status as de-facto jeopardise his chances of being accepted under this visa?
Really don't think he would be able to justify or get away with having put his relationship as single when it comes to applying for any partner based visa at a later date!
~ Would getting married in the short time I have before I leave the country seem particularly suspicious?
I'm especially worried because we'd be more or less looking at a brief registry office ceremony followed by a wee party with some friends. We don't have a LOT of money (enough for the visas and plane tickets, but obviously we want to be saving as much of that as possible rather than spending it on a showy wedding!), we don't have much family and we aren't religious, so a 'proper' wedding ceremony doesn't make sense to us, but I'm painfully aware that our marriage could look like a bit of a sham. We do still want to make the legal commitment to each other though and be husband and wife, but we're umming and aahing about whether we're better to do go ahead with it now or wait until he comes to NZ with his friends later in the year.
Ideally we'd want to get married before applying for any kind of spouse based visa as it ought to strengthen our application, but that's not a huge deal either way.
A bit of background for context, would be great to have some insight from others about what they think would be best in our situation!
We have actually been boyfriend/girlfriend for 4 years (anniversary two days ago!), but have only been 'de-facto' since my coming here on the YMS two years ago.
I put my relationship status on the application for the YMS as single, as we hadn't lived together (had only met each other a couple of times, the vast majority of the relationship was long distance) before then and therefore didn't meet the definition of de-facto. And we certainly weren't married, widowed or divorced! Hopefully they don't hold that against us.
I don't want to extend my visa here as his spouse right now, as better job opportunities have turned up for me back home.
We don't have joint bank accounts and therefore all bills have been in his name, as he has a significant student loan and obviously I don't want to mix much of my money with his til that's all paid off! However we do have plenty of evidence of me regularly transferring funds into his account from both our ends, and a fair amount of evidence of us receiving official documents to the same addresses. Bit tricky with that one though as I was a dolt and didn't keep as many of my bank statements as I should have as I mostly rely on online banking. Doh!
Will they accept historical statements which have been printed from online? They should show the date and my address at the time, but they obviously won't be on official letterhead paper.
We may have to do the same for some of the bills he received at our previous address as well.
We don't do photos much, but do have pictures of us at his sister's wedding last year. Might be able to rustle up others from somewhere as well, going to have to do some serious asking around for that one.
We're hopefully going on a wee holiday to Europe next month as well, so will make sure to keep the booking records and take more pictures there!
Can easily get statements from friends and family. Likewise things like police certificates and references aren't much of an issue for us, no criminal records and all that.
We have a LOT of logs of online evidence of our relationship prior to our considering ourselves de-facto, and will be able to provide plenty for that gap after I've left the UK and before he comes to NZ. I was initially very concerned about us possibly applying for a Spouse Visa while recently living apart, but reading around has eased my fears a bit as we do have compelling reason to be apart and evidence of us remaining in a long distance relationship will not be an issue.
Too bad you can't sit some kind of questionnaire assessing how well you know your partner, we'd ace it!
Still, I'm feeling a lot of unease about the whole situation! We're both terribly afraid of never being able to settle together, so we want to make sure that whatever step we take with him coming to NZ is the best step to guarantee our success.
If worst comes to worst, I still have my UK ancestry tucked under my belt and we can settle there, but financially the UK isn't the best for us!
So sorry for the wall of text. Any thoughts, answers and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!