Time had come to become a legal alien (Sting: Englishman in New York). As the rest of the family has New Zealand Citizenship, I was the only troublemaker and had to apply for the visa.
Since I met that Kiwi guy, the most straightforward option was a resident visa, the one where your partner (who has to be a NZ citizen) sponsors you. My visa mission started when we were visiting family in NZ.
Before leaving for Europe, I went for doctor check-up. Get your credit card or purse ready, immigration medical examinations are good business. Also, if you need to have chest x-ray done, the best is to book a medical centre with x-ray to save yourself time so you don’t have to travel to another medical facility to have x-ray taken.
Of course, I was smart enough to book a place with x-ray. Upon arrival I was told it was out of order that day. You’re either lucky or you’re not.
Another part of my immigration journey I managed to get done in NZ was check-up with the doctor. First the nurse drew my blood and made some basic examinations including my eye vision. I didn’t take my glasses overseas with me so I told the nurse about this as it might be an issue. She didn’t seem much concerned. I can’t drive without glasses and I should wear them more often than I really do. I started to read letters from the board and soon I got to the point where I could just guess by the shape. I decided not to and told the nurse that I can’t read the rest without glasses. She said my eye vision is perfect and I don’t need glasses. What a wonderful thing to hear after all these years!
Next step was check-up with the doctor. I have to mention that quite a few NZ doctors come from other countries (island life…). Here I came across a non-native English speaker whom I couldn’t understand a thing except ‘Hello’. We made it somehow through using the international body language.
Did you manage to read all the way to here? Congratulations! Let’s carry on…
About a month after our return to Europe we sent the documents to Immigration Office in New Zealand. I’m not sure but I think nowadays you can fill all the necessary documents online which makes it so much easier.
Two or three weeks later I received email that Immigration Office received the documents and they’re going to check if everything is filled in properly. Once it’s done, documents will be forwarded to Immigration Officer who will make decision about my application. Till this point things were fine.
Then the fun started. Forms weren’t filled in properly claimed new email message. Ha! I checked it so many times and I forgot to fill in something, am I so goofy?? Yes, I am. I forgot to put ‘No’ in one question and I didn’t fill in N/A where we had nothing to fill in (both you and your partner have to fill in the forms). We didn’t find it in guidelines but it didn’t matter, we were the only one to blame at that time. Poor documents went all the way from NZ to Europe so that we can tick the box and fill in N/A and then they went back to NZ again. Days passed, weeks passed…and yippee! Everything was finally alright and Immigration Officer opened my ‘case’. What a case it was…
Immigration Officer wasn’t happy with documents we sent. It was not enough. The only thing to do was to keep Immigration Officer happy so we sent more documents as wanted.
After this, Immigration Officer went to the land of silence. Days passed, weeks passed, and nothing. No more emails. Deep thoughts on my side followed. What happened? I sent another email to Immigration Officer asking about the processing of my application and empty mailbox was the answer.
NZ Immigration has one really wonderful service. It’s called General Inquiries. Every time I had troubles to get answers I needed these guys always at least replied. And that counts. Another email went to General Inquiries. Next day there was a reply that they’ve received all the documents. Soon email from Immigration Officer that my application is still in progress.
Days passed, weeks passed and nothing again. We lodged a complaint. Immigration Office has to carry out complaints in a certain time period. It didn’t work that time and we get in so-called infinite loop. I sent email to my favourite department called General Inquiries. First time I wasn’t happy with their reply: If you’re not satisfied with services, please lodge a complaint. Haven’t we done it a while ago?
I thanked General Inquiries for their reply and asked them what to do next when we have already done what they recommended. Guess what. Things started to move!
I received reply to my complaint. The next day I received reply to my complaint again. Same one. Immigration Officer started to communicate. After more then two months having our documents we were told that it’s not enough. Immigration Officer still wasn’t happy. Obtain more and send more. The only thing we didn’t send yet were our DNA samples. Translator was wondering about few documents we needed to translate. When she told me that she had never translated anything like that (and yes, she already translated documents for someone else who was applying for visa in NZ as well), I was confused. Something wasn’t right.
Another email to Immigration Officer, polite, but telling the officer what I think. Another email to Immigration Complaint Officer. Things started to move again.
In the next few days I received email saying that my original Immigration Officer was taken of the case and now I have another Immigration Officer. Few days after this I was granted Resident Visa.
And just like that, this fairytale had happy ending.