Hi all,
What a great board! I'm new here, but I've done some searching and reading of old posts, and found a lot of very useful info. I was wondering if anyone could help me with a question, though. In general, I'm trying to decide whether it's a better strategy to claim just the minimum points needed for an EOI to be selected, or claim all the points I may be entitled to. Here are the specifics of my situation:
I have a pretty solid 160 points without providing any details of my current employment. 25 of those points, however, are from claiming qualification and work experience in an area of absolute skill shortage. I believe that I fulfill the requirements outlined in the long term skill shortage list, but they are worded quite vaguely and I'm worried that an immigration officer's interpretation may be different from my own.
To provide myself a safety net, I can try to claim an additional 80 points for current employment in New Zealand outside of Auckland. However, my employment situation is somewhat complicated, and I have a feeling that doing this may cause problems down the line. Basically, I'm in NZ on a partner work visa, and work full-time as a remote independent contractor for a US organization on a long-term contract. I was not able to get a straight answer out of INZ whether this even qualifies as "current skilled employment in New Zealand".
On the other hand, I read that not providing employment info will require me to be interviewed by the CO, possibly delaying my application.
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for the help!