Immigration Process Step 5: Hope for the best

After spending over a month getting background checks and medical exams and collecting other random bits of information about our lives and relationship, we were concerned that our visas might not be approved in time for our expected departure. To make matters worse, we had to send in our passports to complete our application, and needed them for our 4th of July trip to Canada (where we have spent four out of the last five July 4th weekends - soooo patriotic).  

New Zealand immigration has visa offices in Washington DC and Los Angeles. We sent our applications to the DC office. We sent our passports to complete our application less than a month before we were due to move, and crossed our fingers that we would get our visas in time. All our worry was for naught - our visas were approved only five business days after our applications were complete - and we didn't even ask for expedited processing!  New Zealand and the US have an agreement in place under which our application fee was waived due to the type of visa we have, so we only had to pay $33 each as a processing/shipping fee.

A day or two later we received our passports (but nothing else - so don't send originals!),which had our visas in them. The visa is a large sticker that takes up an entire page of your passport, specifying the type of visa and important rules/dates/etc.  Once we had those, we got permission from work to buy plane tickets (they're paying), and so booked two seats for Wednesday, August 7th - we're flying through LAX and then straight onto Auckland (a 13 hour flight). We are going to give Air New Zealand's Skycouch seats a try - that way we'll know whether to recommend it to you all when you come visit!

Immigration Process Step 4: Gathering evidence

After the medical exams and background checks were complete, everything else was fairly easy to get together. All we needed to provide was:

• My employment contract/offer
• Evidence that I possess the qualifications required for my job (so the official transcripts from undergrad and law school)
• Evidence that Rob and I are in a "genuine and stable" relationship

On his Partnership application, Rob had to confirm that we are both over 18, that we have met in person, and that we are not close relatives. Then, to prove that we are in a genuine and stable relationship, we had to put together evidence of our relationship. Kiwis aren't too concerned with marriage, and so our marriage certificate alone wasn't enough evidence.  We ended up providing them with:

• Our marriage certificate (which we had to have translated from Italian to English, as everything must be in English)
• Copies of our joint leases going back to 2010
• Mail sent to each of us at the same address

• A print out of our Facebook friendship history - Apparently Facebook now has "friendship pages", which you can see by going to a friend's page, clicking on the little settings gear at the top right, and scrolling down to "see friendship."  Rob and I have been on Facebook since before we started dating, so it's actually a pretty great history of our relationship. It has time stamps for important dates in our relationship, pictures together, events attended together, and random interactions (including when Rob posted Flight of the Conchords lyrics on my wall in 2007) going all the way back to May 2007.  It doesn't seem like this should be official enough to turn in with an immigration application, but our visa assistance team through work thought it was pretty clever.  Hopefully NZ immigration agrees!

Immigration Process Step 3: Medical Exams

New Zealand has a national health care system, and so they require that all immigrants have an "acceptable standard of health." This was easily the most rigorous part of the application process. Because our visa is for longer than a year, Rob and I both had to undergo the full gamut of tests.  This meant that both of us had to do a full physical, complete with blood and urine tests, and chest x-rays.

We also had a huge stack of forms and papers that had to be filled out by the medical professionals.  You have to have passport photos signed and dated by each examiner, and the doctor has to initial every page.  At first the lab technician refused to sign anything - I had to explain to her multiple times what it was for. It was quite the process.

In the US, any MD is allowed to perform these tests, so I was able to go to my usual doctor. However, I had to go elsewhere to get the chest x-ray.  My doctor warned me that if I went to one of the big hospitals, there would be no way I could get a radiologist to sign my forms.  And it had to be a radiologist - not a radiographer. This x-ray is generally not covered by insurance, but I had a referral from my doctor, and so we're hoping it will be.

In googling the New Zealand immigration physical, I read that the liver test ends up being an issue for a lot of people. As a precaution, Rob and I quit drinking for the two weeks before our physicals and cut back on fatty foods and carbs a couple days ahead of time. As it turned out, a liver test is no longer part of the New Zealand, but I suppose the detox was good for us? They generally are testing for expensive or communicable conditions, such as tuberculosis, STDs and pregnancy (which was grounds for rejection until 2012).

Despite all this, immigrants do not have access to New Zealand's national health care system until they have been in the country for two years (we will have private insurance through work). If an applicant is pregnant, the birth will be covered by the national health care only under certain circumstances. Otherwise, she must demonstrate that she has enough money to cover the costs. However, unlike the US, where the average total price for pregnancy is $30,000 for a natural birth and $50,000 for a C-section (the most expensive in the world!), New Zealand requires evidence of $9,000 NZD to cover these costs, which is less than $7,500 USD.