New Zealand has two types of residence that resemble what other countries call permanent residence, one is called Resident, the other Permanent Resident.
Resident is like permanent residence in most other countries (e.g. green card in US, PR in Canada, etc). A New Zealand Resident can live in the country indefinitely, but if they live outside of New Zealand for an extended period of time, they lose their Resident status. This is again like US, Australia, Canada, etc. After two years of living in New Zealand as a Resident, one can apply for Permanent Resident status, which does not expire regardless of the length of absence from the country. In other countries, you have to get citizenship before you can do this. In New Zealand, Permanent Resident is a status between Resident and New Zealand Citizen. What the article says is that he is a resident, he can enter New Zealand for now, but his status is of the expirable kind.
New Zealand Resident ~ US/Canada/Australia/Germany/etc. Permanent Resident
New Zealand Permanent Resident ~ Nothing that I know of, it's unique
New Zealand Citizen = US/Canada/Australia/Germany/etc. Citizen
Aussie Permanent residency doesn't exactly work that way, it depends on certain factors whether you will need to apply for a "returning resident visa" or not.
It does not depend on whether you have been living outside of Australia for an extended period of time. Under certain conditions, you could live outside of Australia for several years and still be able to return without the need to apply for a visa.
That is not all one needs to know, there is more than that. It's best to talk to an immigration lawyer in case one is unsure about their travel rights.
Yes, New Zealand PR has a lot of rights. Almost as many rights that I have as a British Citizen born outside the UK (my only passport from birth to now).
It's been my dream for the past 10 years to move to New Zealand, and thank God, I was finally granted a Resident visa in May 2021. If you're thinking about moving here though, please don't get your hopes up too high - the application process is very slow and it would've been faster if I'd moved elsewhere. People here have been wonderful, but the government's approach has been hostile to migrants, and I came close to despair several times on the long journey here.
November 2011 - February 2012 Working Holiday visa. Summer job at FPH.
early 2014 - Wanting to return, Skilled Migrant Category visa requires me to get "2 years continuous relevant work experience". Moved to Taiwan (an approved labour market), worked for a microSD manufacturer.
mid-2016 - NZ changes rules to "3 years continuous relevant work experience". Political problems in UK and US cause mass exodus of English-speaking people to NZ, Canada, Australia. Wait times start climbing.
mid-2017 - NZ changes rules to "3 years and a minimum salary of $70k"
mid-2018 - Left Taiwan. Applying for jobs remotely, getting nowhere. Parents supported me to come to NZ and look for a job.
Feb 2019 - Applied for Skilled Migrant Category resident visa.
May 2019 - Left, waited 6 months for temporary work visa to be processed. Working remotely, unpaid, for IoT startup in Auckland. Living in hostels, girlfriend's family in Taiwan, parents in France. Financially supported by parents.
Nov 2019 - Dec 2020 - working in North Shore, actually getting paid! Company already prepared for remote work, thankfully. But not paid every month because the company was running out of money. Began asking around for other jobs.
October 2020 - Case officer assigned to SMC visa application. Hired McVeagh Fleming lawyers to buy me time so I could try to get another job.
January 2021 - Started new job at FPH!
February 2021 - Resident visa approved!
May 2021 - Resident visa issued. After applying, the processing time took 2 years 5 months.
In theory, I could now have a family! My British passport can't be passed on to future kids, but my NZ Resident status should allow children born here to become citizens. However, it is not possible for my girlfriend to join me from Taiwan. It wouldn't help to get married - partnership visas would requires us to live together for over a year (which is obviously not possible these days). Every day my mind wonders whether it's still worth waiting, then every night we chat, and my heart falls in love with her all over again. She's stood firm through so many ups and downs, how could I turn away from that commitment now? She's wonderful, and worth waiting for, even if I never know when or if that day will come.
I'm a NZer and not a doomer at all, and certainly not compared to what's happening elsewhere.
It seems to me NZ's main problems are ones it has had for a long time (housing, inequality, gangs, drugs), some of them are getting better (tech industry), and the stuff I like is still good (tramping, food, environment, sane politics).
Wages for local NZ companies are mostly bad. In spite of that, we are breeding more and more successful companies for reasons I can only guess at. You have a much better chance of finding interesting work than used to be the case.
But the untold story of tech work in NZ is that working remotely for good wages is rapidly getting easier. I started the Mozilla NZ office in 2007 and we were paid adequately, because back then HR didn't have a firm "local cost of labour" policy. Since then I've seen friends find remote work at other companies to get paid a lot more than they would locally for the same job. Zapier is a good one. We can all see that remote work is trending steeply upward in general; it doesn't always translate into location-insensitive pay policies, but sometimes it does.
"everything I dislike about it" is not a short list for me either, but that means there's more that we can fix!
Canadians have a reputation for saying "sorry", let's give NZ a reputation for saying "thank you".
If I stayed in Switzerland (where I was born, but have no citizenship because parents weren't resident), I would have to join the army and kill foreigners. Same in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Austria... many otherwise nice countries still apply conscription, and I'm a pacifist.
People who want to make more money choose to move away to Australia, London, or California. Likewise in Kaohsiung, career-minded people move to Taipei or Hong Kong. The Immigration department is trying to alter that by preferentially issuing visas to rich people, but that's not how this works - it'll just increase inequality, and the government won't even make more money in taxes because most rich people find loopholes and tax havens anyway.
People who choose to move to New Zealand usually have something more worthwhile in life to hope for :)
What foreigners are people in the Swiss or Taiwanese army killing!?
If you move to NZ, I hope you're earning a lot of money. Everything is expensive. Housing especially - though you're used to that to an extent if you know Taipei.
> many otherwise nice countries still apply conscription
It may be the case that it is a necessary condition for remaining a nice country. At least if their neighbors aren't always so nice.
Most civilized countries with universal conscription allow you to do unarmed service (military support tasks) or civil service. In addition there's usually plenty of wiggle room to avoid the conscription altogether: health reasons (or excuses), being a member of certain religions, delaying/avoiding/hiding, or just plain refusing.
I agree. He seems to have done absolutely nothing. Every month it's the same statement, "we're looking into it". (And I actually like most of what this government has done.)
My mate has worked here something like 4-5 years now, still on work visa.
This lockdown Auckland immigration office was shut so his visa wasn’t renewed. Basically has to leave the country if immi doesn’t come up with something. All because NZ’ers have exemption for travel and brought back a fucking delta strain.
Student Visa -> Residence Visa -> Permanent Residence Visa -> Citizenship can be done in about the time it takes to get a post graduate degree. It's very commonly done.
Sadly that hasn't happened for at least 2 of my friends from Global church (Krystal and Agnes). They were both here when I came on Working Holiday in summer 2011-12. They're both still here, still stuck in Student visa -> Work visa cycles.
There is no path to residency that I can see unless you're 1. obscenely wealthy or 2. working for a large, rich company who work closely with MBIE.
And because those companies work closely with MBIE, the Minister's advice gets passed down to HR. So it's extremely difficult to get jobs at such companies without already being a citizen or resident. I still think it's pretty miraculous that I was offered the job now, and barely in time for the case officer!
The solution is for HR to push back, and specifically demand that we have more people from other countries. Right now we're working on translating some software, and it would be much more convenient to have native speakers of other languages working in the company. Instead, we contract it out to a third party, but they don't have the context (and we can't share everything with them due to intellectual property considerations). So we really need to be allowed to hire some more multicultural people, it will help the company and help the world.
The Global congregation of Auckland Baptist Tabernacle, 10:30 am Sunday, 429 Queen St. One of the least "baptist" of baptist churches that I've known; started as a Bible study for non-native English speakers and grew into a whole church! We thank Jesus by singing songs, listen to someone talk for 20-30 mins, discuss questions around circular tables, then share lunch together.
My favourite church is where the sermons are convicting and the people are encouraging (and least favourite is the opposite). Global is a really great community, welcoming newcomers, and encouraging humble conversation rather than pushing a view. So please, welcome to join and worship God with us online! (and in person after lockdown's done for the food)
An often underappreciated distinction between citizens and permanent residents is that if you are convicted of an offence you may be liable to forced removal if you are a non-citizen. [0]
There are cases in Australia of people who have spent nearly their entire life in the country, but never obtained citizenship, and who were deported for committing crimes, [1] including minor drug offences.
Really? You just made me much more interested in NZ politics, if I'm finally allowed to have an opinion and express that with a vote.
Is there a policy-comparison website? I think I know who I admire most, but I think it's unlikely that they'll ever get elected outside of a coalition. So it makes more sense to vote strategically for the constituency where I'm living.
It's almost never possible for any party to govern without a coalition (since we changed from FPP to MMP in 1996). The 2020 election was the first time since 1993 that any party won an outright majority of the seats, and they had unique circumstances to thank: pandemic success and an imploding main opposition party. This perhaps-overly-detailed article will give you a good picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_New_Zealand_general_elect...
There are a few comparison sites. https://policy.nz/ is one, but note that there are a bunch of minor parties that didn't get any seats (some of which just popped up for this election), so use the Wikipedia article above to get an idea of who actually mattered in the end.
yea permanent residency is basically citizenship- mostly used by people who have passports from countries that doesn't allow dual/multiple citizenship.
> Immigration NZ said Page is a New Zealand resident.
> It said Page does not have permanent residence and his visa will allow him to travel in and out of New Zealand only for a defined period of time.