Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Closer to Becoming Kiwis!


Last Friday (16th) was a significant step in our movement towards emigrating to New Zealand.  We finally submitted our ITA (invitation to apply).  This is a massive collection of documents that you have to get together to prove everything you have previously claimed.  You're given 6 months to do it, and our time was getting tight - Tasha's passport was the missing piece in the jigsaw which thankfully arrived within 2 weeks of us applying for it!  You have to give passports, birth certificates, proof of education, police checks, proof of job and job roles etc.  The package I posted was comfortably over an inch thick!

We know its a slow process from now.  Being assigned a Case Officer seems to be taking up to five months, and from there you are facing possibilities of having to gather further documents or attend interviews.  Hopefully we have been thorough enough though and our process will be smooth once we are assigned our Case Officer.

As well as documents you also have to provide the means of payment - yet another four figure sum.

I checked the balance on my card today and saw the ITA has been debited.  I've never been so happy to see so much money exit my card!  Hopefully that means we're in the queue somewhere now ... 

A massive thanks to our friend Larry - I bet he hopes he never has to sign the back of another passport photo again ... or be restricted to signing within such a small little box on a form!

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