Girlfriend to arrive on visitor visa so we can gather evidence for partnership visa

[David12345]

Hi all,

So here is the story, I am a 27 year old male and a New Zealand citizen, I have met an Armenian girl online (threw faceook, not a dating site) two years ago and we were talking as friends frequently learning about each others countries etc. after about one year of talking to each other quite often (almost every day) we became so close we decided to become partners 14 months after meeting online (and yes I had not met her in person, just on Skype). Since we became partners in September 2014 our contact with each other has been everyday with facebook messages and txting, with Skype calls lasting no less than one hour every Sunday. I book a flight to go see her 9 months after we became partners and I spent 3 weeks with her to discus our future, we both rented an apartment for that time.

We have applied for a visitor visa for her to join me in NZ as to get a partnership visa we have to live together for about 3 months which we have not been able to do at this stage. We are hoping this gets approved as I have herd it is hard for Armenians to be approved visas, we have applied for a 5 month visitor visa with me as a sponsor and provided cover letters asking for exception to instruction and all evidence we have of our relationship and told them we would like to apply for a partnership visa in NZ after 3 months of living together. We are both hoping this gets approved as it has to go to the New Zealand immigration in Moscow and we have herd they can be quite tough and often issue limited visas which means no further visas can be applied for while on that visa. we are obviously hoping she is granted a limited visa as we would not be able to apply for a partnership visa while she is here, which is our plan and we have told them that in our cover letters.

If all goes well with the visitor visa we would like to be as prepared as we can be when it comes to collecting all required documents and evidence suitable to successfully apply for a partnership based work visa, I know that official documents addressed to us at the same address are one main piece of evidence which is very important, how ever in our situation my partner will be here with no income and be living off my bank account (which I will add her to) is there really any point in adding her name to my bills when the immigration officer will see she has been living off me and has no income?

The next thing on my mind is what else can we collect as evidence? I own my house so can not have a joint tenancy agreement, If anybody can provide a list of things I should collect while she is here that would be really great. I was thinking of adding her to my car insurance even though she does not have a drivers licence, is that a good idea?

But anyway, after reading this I hope some people can provide some good tips on what to gather and what to do while she is here to help us threw the partnership visa.

Thanks a lot people

[Sun777]

is there really any point in adding her name to my bills when the immigration officer will see she has been living off me and has no income?

There are occasions when dependent applicants are in NZ without a job or at times home makers etc, so I suppose it is alright to add her to the bills even if she's not working.

The next thing on my mind is what else can we collect as evidence?

There are number of posts where people have shared the details submitted for relationship proof, you can use the search functionality and find some of those while someone shares any new information/ their experience.

I own my house so can not have a joint tenancy agreement, If anybody can provide a list of things I should collect while she is here that would be really great. I was thinking of adding her to my car insurance even though she does not have a drivers licence, is that a good idea?

Yes it is good idea to add her to your car insurance, visitors & foreigners are allowed to drive in NZ for 12 months (each time they enter the country)

[Kiwilad]

"we have applied for a 5 month visitor visa with me as a sponsor"

So am I right in believing you applied for a partnership based visitor visa?

[David12345]

Hi there, no we are not applying for a partnership based visa at this stage as we have not lived together for 3 months, only 3 weeks while I visited here.
She is applying for a visitor visa and I am providing a sponsorship form to go with her application, and yes, there is a specific sponsorship form for visitor visas which is different to sponsoring partnership based visas.
They are forms 1025 and 1017 I believe

[Kiwilad]

I see. Well all the best with getting that approved, fingers are crossed for you


Feel free to have a read over my recent post which has a list of everything we supplied for our partnership based visa which just got approved.
http://www.enz.org/forum/showthread....269&highlight=
I understand that you own your own home so some of the living together stuff won't be relevant for you.
There was a couple on here not long ago who had been living together a friends house for 3 months so no tenancy agreement, no bills etc, and they were approved. (I can't seem to find the thread)
The main thing for you would be to put her name on as many documents as possible, eg next of kin etc, add her to your insurance, and also get as much mail in her name delivered to your address as possible, sign up for fly buys cards etc, anything that will deliver mail to your address with either her name alone or with both names. We did online grocery shopping sometimes in my name and sometimes in my partner, I think this is good as it actually proves you are at the address on this date as you have to sign for it.

[David12345]

Thanks for that, you sure had a lot of evidence, i hope i can gather a lot like that also, however somethings like wedding invitations etc have to happen by chance i guess, you movie tickets with photos was interesting to me, can you elaborate on that? as the tickets do not have names on them? what did you do when you went to the movies to provide evidence you did so? was there proof of dates you saw the movie also?

Thanks mate

[Kiwilad]

Yeah certainly the wedding invitation was by chance, but anything along those lines even messages from a friend inviting you both to dinner or something is good evidence you guys are in a genuine relationship and that your relationship is recognised by your friends/family.

The movie tickets have dates on them, we took a photo together before the movie displaying the movie tickets, I know it sounds stupid, but sometimes you have to do things out of the ordinary for a visa. Then we gave the gave INZ the movie tickets accompanied with the the photo, it could be seen as circumstantial but I suppose circumstantial is better than nothing.

http://www.immigration.govt.nz/opsmanual/
Then click temporary class visa/work visa/family stream.. If you have a read over the ops manual, you'll see under section E4.5.35 section C, you'll see this "evidence of the parties being committed to each other both emotionally and exclusively, such as evidence of:
joint decision making and plans together
sharing of parental obligations
sharing of household activities
sharing of companionship/spare time
sharing of leisure and social activities
presentation by the parties to outsiders as a couple."
So we used the movie tickets as evidence of spending spare time together/leisure and social activities, and the wedding invitation as evidence of the presentation by the parties (us, the couple) to outsiders.

I spent a lot of time reading over previous post here (by searching 'partner' in the search box), and what I found was people that were getting declined were oftern getting declined because of very small things and so I came to the conclusion that literally every small but of evidence you can give even if it's circumstantial could mean the difference between being approved and declined.

I would suggest having a good read over the ops manual and going over each point to figure out a way you can essentially give evidence to tick as many boxes as possible.

Another thing to consider as well will be for your partner to obtain a police certificate from her home country before she comes to NZ on her initial visa, as she will need the police clearance certificate for when the time comes to apply for the partner visa and I would imagine the process to obtain that in NZ would be a lot more time consuming and potentially cost a lot more.

[David12345]

Thanks a lot for that, will be gathering everything i can for sure, so im guessing in the photos together holding the movies tickets that the details on the tickets would be to small to see right? but you sent the tickets in with the application.

In theory you could have been holding the same tickets every time and sent in movie tickets from other people? not that you did that or that i will do that, i just want to make sure i do the same.

I can see how that would be circumstantial but i also agree every little thing is worth sending

[Kiwilad]

I don't have the picture in front of me right now, but yeah I'd assume you're right in saying it would be too small to read the finer details.
We only sent in 1 set of movie tickets so I don't think INZ would have considered what you are saying. I'll never know what kind of impact the tickets had on the COs decision though so really sending those in could have been a complete waste of time, but the way my partner and I saw it was atlest it shows we were together on this date, wether we went to the movies or not, we were together.

[Kiwilad]

Another way to avoid what you are saying, would be to do other activities other than movies. Luge, bowling, I don't know haha. It's not limited to the movies.