Don’t become an NZ Citizen in Waitakere City!
Becoming a Citizen of New Zealand is something many of strive for – especially if – like the British – you can get Dual Citizenship and don’t have to give up your birthright to do it. To qualify, you now have to have residency for 5 years, so you really have to prove you are here to stay, and make a huge commitment to New Zealand. It’s a wonderful opportunity, and something I personally felt honoured to be able to achieve. Our Citizenship ceremony – though small (being in a small rural town) was lovely and friendly.
Apparently its not if you happen to have your citizenship conferred by one Waitakere City councillor Ross Dallow, who takes this opportunity to lecture you – not on the responsibilities of your new place as an NZ citizen, but on the horrors that Immigrants bring to NZ: Kidnappings amongst the Asian population, the “browning” of NZ (cos like there isn’t a home grown Brown population anyway!) and in increase in Illegal Drug Manufacture (which services a huge swathe of the Kiwi Population – I guess we are supposed to ignore that.)
Apparently he was trying (as an Ex-Policeman) to show these poor immigrants that they could trust the police here:
“I’ve said there have been instances of kidnappings in the Asian community and that is now behind us, but I do point out that in recent times there have been a number of Asian people involved in the manufacture and distribution of drugs. That’s all factual.
“I encouraged them [that] if they know anything about crime, to trust our New Zealand policemen – in some overseas countries [the police] are corrupt – and I would trust them to do the appropriate thing.
“Go to the police, don’t be frightened, as they are very safe police here.
Right – cos Kiwis are never involved in crime? Blimey – illegal drug manufacture here is so rife its almost like a weekend hobby – and it sure as hell ain’t Asians who making the bulk of it! And if this is the attitude being shown of the NZ Police Force – it really hasn’t done them any favours. Besides – the NZ Police Force not corrupt? Um – theres a lot of stuff in the news here that would tend to contradict that view rather a lot.
Now don’t get me wrong – Mr Dallow is entitled to his opinion. I may think it’s stupid – but I think he has the right to hold it and to spout forth as often as he likes as a councilor and as a private person – but he is bloody well NOT entitled to spoil this day for the new citizens of New Zealand – and he should bloody well NOT speak like that when representing the Queen and this country in such a ceremony. I hope that he is banned from EVER holding a citizenship ceremony again.
Why on earth is this twit allowed to ruin such a day in the first place??? Apparently his lectures at these ceremonies are well known, and complained about by other council staff. Which does beg the question -why hasn’t he been removed from carrying out this function. Carterton’s Mayor did ours – so why cant the Mayor of Waitakere City – Bob Harvey – take over and provide a ceremony that is civil, polite and a beautiful welcome to all new Citizens, no matter where they came from or the colour of their skin.
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Why you really ought to take out shipping insurance :)
From the amazing Very De-motivational website.
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Biometric! Crackdown! on Illegal! Immigrants!
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, NZIS & Immigration issues
In a headline that would bring pleasure to the ears of many Daily Mail or Daily Express readers, encapsulating many of the papers favourite subjects, NZ is to crack down in illegal immigrants, and share the information with the UK.
So what is behind the headlines?
Many (economic) refugee’s arriving in UK/Europe have in the past ‘lost’ their passports while on the flight over. Thereby making it very difficult for immigration authorities to prove who they are, or whether they are genuine refugees. Net result, they spend a protracted time in Europe while their refugee case is investigated and they can’t be returned to the country they flew in from. Since they don’t have a passport and their actual country of citizenship can’t be proven one way or the other. You can’t put someone on a plane and send then ‘home’ without a passport unless you can prove that the country you are sending them to is ‘home’.
One way to avoid this problem is by finger printing all non-resident arrivals. So when someone shows up without passport, you can potentially prove who they are, without their co-operation. The Americans have been doing this for a while, whether you need a visa before you fly or not.
(Which is why we refuse to fly through the US on the way back to the UK, and apparently we aren’t the only ones, because AirNZ started Flying Via Hong Kong a few years back to cater to people who refused to fly via Los Angeles).
What the NZ sharing of information means here is that if someone turns up in Australia on one passport, and whether they seek refugee status or not, then try and enter NZ on another passport (or ‘lose’ their passport on the plane to NZ) – the NZ authorities will be able to check their fingerprints with Australia when the person first entered. By return, the Australian authorities can then check NZ records. Net result, fewer ‘undesirable’ people are let into either country. Undesirable here is anyone who isn’t traveling on a genuine passport that belongs to them and correctly identifies them.
This helps with the bigger issue of criminal gangs establishing what appears to be genuine travel records on a fake passport. Using a patsy means that when the real criminal wants to enter a country, the passport looks used and genuine. Unless of course finger prints are taken each time. In which case Immigration authorities can determine that you’re using a fake passport. And you suddenly become ‘undesirable’.
The scope is being widened, to include Canada, the UK & the USA. Which casts a much wider net.
Why you may ask, is NZ part of this? Surely there aren’t that many criminals trying to sneak into the US via NZ? or the other way around?
Well, NZ has often been seen as a bit of a soft target for criminals looking to enter other friendly countries, or for obtaining fake passports. And NZ, for all it’s anti-nuclear stance, is still part of the friendly intelligence community. So the net result is that NZ passports are considered friendly, and less suspicious. NZ sharing finger print info is more likely to be of benefit to the other countries when checking on people arriving there, than of benefit to NZ for people arriving here.
So, NZ cracking down in illegal immigrants is more about stopping people using fake passports and keeping them out of any friendly country. Rather than turning a tide of economic refugee’s, which to be honest we really don’t have here.
But the headline was good!
Still no Ikea in NZ, but…
Filed under: Cost of living, Getting to New Zealand, Life in New Zealand
straight from the Facebook Page “I want IKEA stores to open in New Zealand” comes a link for a new company in Parnell Auckland that is shipping IKEA products from Australia for you, MYKEA.
The Idea is that you visit the Australian IKEA website, fill in a form with MYKEA telling them what you want, and they send you a quote telling you how much it will cost to get it delivered to you, including all costs (taxes, shipping etc). You can then place the order or not. They have a minimum order of $150 AUD, and you cant any item less than $10 AUD, but all in all it looks like a good system to me.
Now you are going to pay a premium for this obviously – not only are you covering IKEA’s profit, but also MYKEA’s, but hey – nowt wrong with that. They are being enterprising, and offering a service that many NZ’ers really want. Good on ‘em. And lets face it – you can always judge for yourself whether the quoted prices suit your pocket, or are fair. Given the numbe rof people I’ve met taking flights to Aussie just to go get stuff from IKEA – I’d say they could be onto something in saving you money on airfairs and excess baggage fees!
Actually they aren’t the first to do this. When we first arrived 5 and a bit years ago, there was a company doing the same thing, and another company that was actually just importing container loads of stuff and selling it the old fashioned way. Both of those stopped trading – Ive no idea if it was because they went out of business or went on to do other things. But it does suggest that there may be a window here in which to make the most of this opportunity.
Depending on whether we make out “city living” arrangement permanent after a few months of trialling – I am sorely tempted to splurge (once we have cleared the credit cards!) and buy some decent storage! NZ is woefully short on decent affordable storage I’m afraid. And to be honest – when you have kit out a second home -you need access to something that isnt going to rob you blind on the costs. The nearest similar store to IKEA in NZ is Freedom Furniture – but its a lot more expensive. Arguably the quality is better, especially if you compare it with the cheaper IKEA ranges, but when the budget is what matters – there really isn’t a good alternative.
If you have IKEA bookshelves – or indeed IKEA anything - what ever you do – bring it with you! You will regret it if you don’t. Even if you don’t want to keep it – bring it and sell it on Trade Me.
By the way: apparently the reason we cant have an IKEA store in NZ is becuase teh Auckland council reckons they cant cope with the traffic chaos that will inevitably ensue when 4,000,000 kiwis descend the place. Sheesh.
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Me and the MX5: Part2
Filed under: Cost of living, Getting to New Zealand, Life in New Zealand
So we arrived in New Zealand, and oddly enough, as these things tend to pan out – I did not end up buying a new car straight away. Mostly this was because we started out living in Wellington City, right in the middle of the CBD and could walk almost everywhere. And as we were fainting with shock over the true cost of living, we decided that being sensible {shudder} we would leave the expense till we needed it.
I even on occasion succumbed to using Public Transport {Shudders}.
We made the most of it, there was a good bus service to Eastbourne and Days bay, or we could take the ferry over and get breakfast at the cafe and bum on the beach. But it was awkward for food shopping, because we weren’t as free to shop around. And lets face it – its a right pain in the patootie when you have to lug carrier bags full of food across town!
But then of course we decided to buy a house in the Wairarapa, and couldn’t put off buying a car any longer. Hubby would need it to get to work, even if he was using the train, and where were buying – will – there wasn’t a Tescos within walking distance. Nope – for country living – a car is a necessity.
So – MX5 it was then.
Ah nope!
Dammit but we needed a “sensible car” {Shudders}.
We ended up buying a “Station Wagon” which just sounds so hideous to me. Estate Car is so much more “English”. There were a number of reasons for this. Its was big, comfy, and very very fast. The fact that it was black, had blacked out windows and black lights glinting blackly on a black background also helped.
It was also only $9000, though we did have to spend another few $$$ on it afterwards. This was also at the time that my family were coming over for their first 6 months trip, and we figured it was big enough to fit all 5 of us plus a lot of luggage, which saved us a considerable amount of hassle and expense on getting them from Auckland to their new home, as we were going to take a few days holiday to do the trip and see some sights as well.
So that was that – still no MX5, all the money for a car spent on a fast, black, but decidedly non-convertible “sensible” car.
That was 5 years ago….
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Me and the MX5: Part1
In a previous life – I went through a divorce. And as many people do, I went out and spoiled myself afterwards with a completely unsensible and frivolous spending spree and bought a convertible. So about 11 years ago I bought my first wonderful British Racing Green MX5 – with pop-up headlights.
I had so much fun.
Then as luck would not have it – a bumble bee spoiled all my fun, by stinging a young lad in the arm while he was hurtling round a corner in the Forest of Dean, and he drove right in to me.
Which hurt. A lot.
So that was a write off, but the insurance paid out, and I went straight back to the dealer I had bought it from, and bought another one. That was my second British Racing Green MX5 – with pop-up headlights.
I had some laughs with that – as it had a disturbing habit of spinning wildly out of control at the most inconvenient moments – like just as I was going round roundabouts, and ending up facing the wrong way. So as this was just as me and new hubby were getting married and buggering off to NZ for 5 weeks on honeymoon, we dropped it back to the specialist dealer, and asked him to try and figure what was wrong.
When we got back – on a stupidly early flight into Heathrow, we detoured to Ilford to pick up the car. Apparently no one could replicate the madcap spinning – but they changed the wheels anyway, twiddled with the suspension, and prayed a bit. Thankfully – that seemed to do the trick, and I didn’t die mangled in a spinning car.
Of course at this point – we decided emigrating to NZ would be laugh.
Well, I wasn’t going to give up my lovely car, so started looking at shipping costs. Most companies were looking at charging about the same, and basically we were looking at hiring a 40ft container instead of a 20ft container, and boxing the car in.
At which point the gits at LTNZ (Land Transport New Zealand) threw a bureaucratic spanner in the wheels: we were not allowed to import the car becuase it didn’t have a Frontal Impact Standard Pass because it was 2 years too old.
But – I thought – the car obviously passed a frontal impact test in as much as a Transit Van driving at speed frontally impacted my last MX5 and I didn’t end up squished on the road. How much more frontal impact can you get than that????
Well – we reckoned this was those economic scams designed to stop scummy migrants from not spending more of their hard earned cash in New Zealand setting up their new lives.
Bah Humbug!
So I had to sell it.
When the guy came to buy it – I couldn’t watch as he drove it away. It was a few weeks before we were leaving – and I was gutted to be saying goodbye to my car. I swore I would buy another one as soon as we got to New Zealand….
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Moving to the city: not as easy as it sounds.
So we are becoming “Trendy City Folk” with an apartment in the big city and a county pile to escape to at the weekend.
I’d be turning in my grave if I had one.
On the plus side – we started with the country pile so we don’t have to work up to it, but still!
Now we actually own an apartment in the City, but that is rented out with really good tenants, and would actually cost us a small fortune to live in. So we are continue to keep that rented, and have rented another apartment ourselves in the same block. As much as I am not a city person – I have to say I do love the apartment itself. The building lets it down, and I am going to have to have words with the body corporate about what is going with the on site Gym and pool – I real selling point for me – as its a disgrace.
But – I’ve slept really well the couple of nights we have stayed there so far, we have a proper kitchen (cooker so clean it definitely wasn’t used by the previous tenant – not unusual), and space for a separate office. And our stonkingly large TV and surround sound system.
It could definitely be worse.
Our biggest issue was actually organizing the removal. We used Crown Relocations, who we recommend for the emigration move – they were brilliant. However shifting from the Wairarapa to Wellington with a fraction of the stuff we hauled half way round the world was much more tricky. It took hubby a lot of sorting out, and I believe at the final count he had to confirm our starting address, final address and access no less than 6 times. They have to paid in advance, but didn’t get the invoice to us till midday the day before. I had tp get the bank manager to set up the payment, and then send a confirmtion email, but the lady at Crown had gone home by then. Thankfully there was an out of office email which gave details of someone else to send the confirmation to, and he then called to confirm we were in fact moving.
All to get to wellington!
So we moved in - Crown arrived with our furniture, and i promptly left to have a coffee with a friend of mine, just round the corner from the apartment. City living has its benefits after all – I may as well make the most of them!
We topped off the evening with a couple of friends round and a bottle of wine.
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When are you too old to emigrate?
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, Life in New Zealand
I’ve had a number of conversations with people over the last few months about whether they are too old to emigrate to NZ.
For those after the executive summary;
The answer is never
- What are you waiting for?
- Do you have your passport handy?
- Mines an Earl Gray tea, decaf Americano for Avalon – thank you
- The projected 3rd quarter benefit of taking on this challenge more than outweighs the possible opportunity cost, or indeed the potential to maximise productivity enhancements with your current strategy.
- There are tax advantages
- You can use a cool AirNZ iPhone application
While of course there are age limits if you want to come in on the skilled migrant stream (56 at the moment), you can still apply under the ‘investor’ category if you’ve got enough cash, or an adult child living in NZ.
So how old is too old?
There was quite a bit of coverage the other year when Eric King-Turner (102 at the time), emigrated from the UK to NZ, with his Kiwi wife (87). His rationale is quoted as being;
“What’s important is that, when I’m 105, I don’t want to be thinking `I wish I had moved to the other side of the world when I was 102’”
Of course in this case he had the advantage of a Kiwi wife, and I’ve no doubt the very bad publicity NZ & INZ would have got if they refused him. So on the face of it, you’re only as old as the man (or woman) you feel.
For us, that sentiment of regret was something we had heard from a number of people while we were still in the UK looking at our options. It served as a good motivator. Of course, you can always look back and regret not visiting NZ five years before, or regret not just jacking everything in and taking a risk. Any course of action that you didn’t take when you had the opportunity can be a source of regret. I believe it’s better to look at the time since then as a source of learning.
For some people they may not be at a stage in their own lives to emigrate. At least investigating it and considering the options is taking action and getting yourself on the way to moving. Or not, as the case may be. There are certainly a few people we know of who came to NZ, only to really dislike it, head back to the UK and find that they loved it again.
Moving away to find that you were really at home where you were may seem like an expensive circular journey. Or possibly a triathlon – going round in a very big circle, being exhausted and 20 pounds lighter at the end of it. It’s much better than living with the possible regret if you’d not taken that circular journey though. (For the record those people, sometimes known as ‘ping pong poms’ are in the minority.) Most people we know who have moved out of the UK and then returned for a holiday/business trip have hated the UK to varying degrees, and been really grateful to return to their new home.
Personally I found that was simply perspective. I’m used to less traffic, less people, empty beaches, friendly people and so on. The prospect of spending the day at a 500+ shop indoor shopping mega complex with 50,000 other people just turns my brain to jelly now.
From the backlog of parent applications with INZ, again there’s plenty of people mid-life who are looking to up sticks and move to NZ. It’ll take time with the expected two year wait, again that time can be used productively. So you feel at least two years younger when you then get on the first stage of the Immigration hoop jumping exercise. (Did I say triathlon? it’s more like a decathlon with mandatory gymnastics disciplines too)
So as with Eric, I think it’s better to get organised and take action than worry about what you might have done previously. Or indeed how old you may be today. Emigrating is more about open minds than any perceived ability to do a triathlon.
Well I never: An interesting Immigration report
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, Life in New Zealand, NZIS & Immigration issues
So fair play, reading through the two reports from Dept. of Labour has actually been interesting. Well written, with conclusions and recommendations, not just dry statistical facts.
Something interesting from INZ/DoL for a change. Whatever next, Winston Peter’s as Immigration Minister? - Well stranger things have happened!
Seriously, the two reports;
International Migration Outlook & Migration Trends & Outlook sound similar – and to be honest there really isnt much difference (but hey – its waste some extra tax money writing 2 reports instead of one.)
Both are well written, and for a change have dozens of citations. So you can actually check where they are getting some of their facts from, and that they aren’t lying through their teeth. I was pleasantly surprised to find most of the cited reports are publicly available too. So you can read & draw your own conclusions.
Anyhow, interesting things/facts/observations from the IMO;
23% of NZ’s resident population as of June 2009 were not born here – and that number has been going up. Here’s a table showing where that 23% came from;
If you look at the ‘working age population’ that 23% turns into 25%.
This means that more migrants are staying in NZ longer, it’s now only 24 leavers for every 100 new migrants during the 2001-2006 period. Which, as we’ve mentioned earlier, is actually showing more loyalty to their new home than the 40%-ish of Kiwi’s who leave.
The employment numbers are a little worrying;
Unemployment rates for immigrants are about 3% above the national average. Perhaps not surprising with plenty of migrants coming in as Skilled Migrants or on Work To Residence without job offers.
New migrants are paid $10k-$15k less than their previously resident Kiwi colleagues.For performing comparable work
And it ‘only’ takes 15 years for that gap to close! 
15 years! OMG, you gotta be kidding? Come to NZ, take a huge pay cut, and if you’re lucky, you’ll earn the same as your colleague in a mere 15 years. humpfhh.
Still this may have something to do with another finding. That there was no evidence from another Dept. of Labour report that migrants were choosing to settle in an area which had higher than national average salaries, or lower than national average unemployment. i.e. new migrants weren’t actually picking the geographical area’s with fewer people having the in demand skills. hmm, perhaps we were just a little strange that way. We came to Wellington because the pay is better and its where the demand is – mostly because its where the government is. Most migrants still gravitate to Auckland, where the wages are lower and house prices are higher. Take note!
Wowing an potential employer at interview is going to do you a lot better than hoping that ‘averages’ will mean you get a better salary. Clearly some of this report points to studies showing that isn’t the case and you’ll get less than the average of your new Kiwi colleagues.
Time to brush up the interview skills.
Of course if you bring kids over with you when you migrate, then they don’t have to work to close that 15 year gap. The study showed that 18 year olds entering the work place faced no discrimination over salary whether they were Kiwi born & bred, or had arrived the day before their 18th birthday. So that’s reassuring.
There is also a (brief) section on the economic impacts of immigration. Only based on one study mind you. Basically, immigrants are good for the economy. In ‘productive’ terms;
- Migrants bring cash which they spend (really?! – you don’t say),
- Pay more in taxes to Govt. than they draw in benefits (shock horror, migrants aren’t here to sponge off the state!)
- Migrants reduce production costs (read as: are forced to accept lower wages)
- Improve the competitiveness of NZ goods & Services, which helps exports. (same as above really)
So I’m not so sure that this study really does justice to the ‘immigrant’ contribution to the NZ economy. I wonder if they actually asked migrants what their ‘contribution’ was?
Fascinating numbers
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, NZIS & Immigration issues
Well, okay, perhaps not for a lot of people. However, I’m one of those sick puppies (meow) who finds spreadsheets and numbers quite fascinating when they tell you something interesting.
So much to my surprise, we found at the weekend that Immigration now have a statistics page on their website. Seems to have been there for a while too. So kudos to INZ for releasing the information as part of open Govt.
So what can these numbers tell us?
Well for starters download the Excel files, since you can play with the numbers. Thankfully someone at INZ knows how to use Excel and has created lots of pivot tables – yippee. Although they’ve not created enough graphs I think. Graphics, pictures, we need to see more coloured lines.
So, if you really want to find out how many parents, originally resident in the UK made an application for NZ residency, via the London branch in a random month anytime in the last 14 years – you can! Download R6 – Residence applications accepted for processing.
Want to know how many of those people applying got approved or declined? – Download R2 Residence decisions by month.
Of course, it may have been too simple to put all those numbers into a single spreadsheet. Still, the info is there.
So you can indeed see how many people applied from each coutry, broken down by month, and which stream, whether they were primary or secondary applicants, and whether they got accepted or not. There’s loads more statistical info buried in them thar’ numbers, so I may start coming out with interesting factoids. Personally, I’m interested to see if anyone from a ‘first world’ country managed to get into NZ via the ‘humanitarian’ stream – normally reserved for refugee’s of the non-economic variety.
Of course more really interesting stuff is buried in R8 – Residence applications on hand. INZ talk a lot about having a large workload, lots of decisions to make etc. Which they do. How much of a workload is this? Well take a look at R8, these are all the applications that people have made to come to NZ. Whether or not INZ have even started working on the application or not. One of the few graphis provided in the three noted sheets is below, ranging from July 2000 on the left through to January 2010 on the right. {you can click on the image to load it full size}
Uncapped family sponsorship (non-Kiwi family of Kiwi citizens) has grown steadly since 2000 from approx 3,000 to almost 7,000 per year.
Parent & Adult sibling capped family sponsorship applications have gone from ~4,500 to ~10,500 – with no change in the number of places made available. And anyone wonders why there’s a queue?
For a big wow!, the Business/Skilled migrant stream peaked at a queue of ~51,500 applications at the end of 2002.. Dunno what happened there, but I’m sure gonna go find out.
Stay tuned for more (possibly useless) interesting factoids.
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