Are Applications from the USA up? (Trump Refugees?)

[sandgrubber]

I planned my move to NZ (including house purchase) before the election. Easy for me cause I have dual Australian/US citizenship. I hear a lot of chatter from others that they would like to get out, and NZ is a preferred destination.
I'm curious. Is this showing up as an increase in visa applications from the USA?

[JandM]

We don't have direct access to that kind of information as it happens. Every so often, INZ publishes a summary of the applications there have been, from which countries, and how many have been successful, but that's in retrospect.
https://www.immigration.govt.nz/abou...ics/statistics

[sandgrubber]

Here's a relevant news clip . . .
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...calypse-escape

Who knows . . . NZ may end out with a chunk of Silicon Valley.

[Juniper]

We fall into this category. Bush's re-election prompted us to look at NZ back in 2004, and we almost pulled the trigger in 2007 but then the kids came along and we decided to stay close to family. (We have a lot of reasons besides the political, but that was the initial inspiration.)

On the latest election night we knew exactly what we would do if things went wrong, so we had total clarity - but it was still difficult emotionally to realize we were really leaving. We almost expected there to be a line at the passport office the next morning, but didn't see any others fleeing Trump. I have seen the articles mentioning Americans wanting to flee, but there is a major difference between "registering an interest" on the website, complaining on Facebook, and actually getting all your ducks in a row (logistically, emotionally, financially - and of course getting enough EOI points).

I'm sure there will be some degree of uptick, but I'd be surprised if it was immediate. Our decision is made, but with the points threshold change we can't even lodge an EOI until we get to NZ and start interviewing for jobs (unless the supposed April change in rules ends up going in our favor). I doubt the thousands of people "interested" in moving will actually translate into thousands of applications, at least not this year.

Regarding a Silicon Valley brain drain, there might be a grain of truth to that since it's relatively easy for highly experienced software programmers to get enough points. However, much of Silicon Valley is already composed of immigrants, so I'm not sure how interested many of them will be in emigrating elsewhere. Just anecdotally speaking, when I worked for HP, there were only a couple other Americans on my floor. So who knows.

I guess we'll see! My aunt saw one of these articles and got a little hysterical, saying maybe one of us should go over immediately and secure housing. I know there's a housing shortage in the first place, but we just can't put the cart before the horse like that. Immigration is stressful enough without worrying about things beyond our control ;-)

[Oregonkiwi]

Is this showing up as an increase in visa applications from the USA?

Yes. I'm having trouble finding the links now, you should be able to find them if you search the NZ news sites, there have been plenty of stories in local news about this. Eg, a Stuff story from 11 November says

In New Zealand, immigration officials said the New Zealand Now website, which deals with residency and student visas, had received 1593 registrations from United States citizens since November 1 – more than 50 per cent of a typical month's registrations in just seven days.

[Oregonkiwi]

I saw this story in the newspaper today: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar...ectid=11818179 "Americans' applications for NZ citizenship up 70 per cent after Donald Trump's election win"

"The number of Americans who applied for a grant of NZ citizenship rose by 70 per cent in the 12 weeks following the election of President Donald Trump when compared to the same period a year earlier, immigration records obtained by The Associated Press show.

Figures also show the number of Americans who obtained a New Zealand work visa in January was up 18 per cent from a year earlier, as was the number of Americans who visited the country."