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!