Why you need marine insurance when you emigrate – 2
There’s an article in today’s Herald from a Christchurch man whose goods are stuck on the Rena.
Mr Rhodes may also be left short on his insurance. His first thought was, “The ship won’t sink”, but he insured his contents in case anything was broken.
“We were pretty sure $25,000 would cover it, but now we’ve been going through everything … that insurance is not going to cover it all.
We actually created a spreadsheet of absolutely everything we were shipping. We were as picky about it as we were about budgeting – so everything was listed – and we gave everything a value. So by the time we organised the insurance – we knew exactly what we owned (which was a shocking amount of “stuff”) and how much it would cost to replace.
We worked out we needed cover for £44,000 worth of stuff. Scarily – about a 25% of that was for our books – and that was priced for replacements at UK Prices – which is considerably cheaper than NZ prices.
Yes it costs – but put that into context – $25,000 of cover even at todays exchange rate would only cover the replacement of our books (about £12,500). We are all notoriously bad for under valuing our goods.
So I really recommend – painful and immensely boring though it is – actually sitting down and cataloguing everything before you ship. There’s also another upside to this – anything you pack before the shippers get in (possibly like us you have your house “staged” for selling so a load of stuff is boxed up in advance) – you can actually number the boxes and add the box number to the spreadsheet. Makes finding the lemon juicer a helluva lot easier to find at the other end.
Why you need marine insurance when you emigrate.
See those “boxes” tipping over on the back of that ship? Some of those could contain the household goods of people moving to New Zealand. The Rena has been run aground on a reef near Tauranga. For ease – the Dom Post has a nifty The Story So Far section:
Wednesday, October 5
2.20am: Rena, a Liberia-flagged 235m vessel, was heading to Tauranga from Napier when it crashed into the Astrolabe Reef, about 7km north of Motiti Island. Maritime NZ said the cargo ship, which was carrying 1900 tonnes of fuel, was on a 10-degree list and some fuel had leaked from its hydraulic pumps.
Thursday, October 6
-An early morning flight by MNZ confirmed an oil slick stretching 2 kilometres.
-Four dead birds were found, covered in oil. An oiled wildlife response team was mobilised.
-The Director of Maritime New Zealand issued the owners with two notices. One, that a reputable salvor be appointed. Two, that MNZ can take control if it deems it necessary and the vessel owner must comply with the National On Scene Commander’s directions.
Friday, October 7
-Four little blue penguins and two shags affected by oil were rescued from Motiti Island. Six teams of responders are deployed and joined by 10 more teams on Saturday.
Saturday, October 8
-Fresh oil is spotted leaking from the cargo ship, which is on an 11-degree list, MNZ confirms.
-Specialists from around New Zealand and Australia join the more than 100-member strong oil spill response team led by MNZ. Three hundred defence force personnel are on standby.
Sunday, October 9
-Oil recovery teams head out on the water to collect oil. The oiled wildlife response is continuing
-About 10 tonnes of oil is pumped from the Rena to the bunker barge Awanuia.
Monday, October 10
-3500 tonnes of oily water has been recovered and offloaded at the Port of Tauranga.
-Clumps of oil are found washed up on the beach.
-Awanuia is currently alongside Rena and preparations are underway to transfer oil from Rena to the Awanuia, weather permitting.
Tuesday, October 11
- Environment Minister Nick Smith calls the incident our worst environmental disaster.
- Stormy weather in the region makes the clean-up difficult
- Maritime New Zealand issue warnings for volunteers to stop picking up clumps of oil.
Now, the captain of the ship is being charged, and faces a fine of upto $10,000 or 1 year in jail. His ship is leaking oil which will do substantial damage to the New Zealand environment and we have to pay to clean up his mess.
$10,000 or 1 year jail! That 10% of the fine, and 14% of the jail time he could face if he got caught giving immigration advice without a licence.
But that aside – what would you do if that happened to the ship carrying your containing?
I despise insurance companies – especially with the sickening way they are behaving in New Zealand right now with regard to the earthquake in Christchurch – but I also know I would stump up the cash and pay the premium to insure all my worldly goods when shipping them half way round the world.
Our shipping insurance cost £1,390 7 years ago (blimey was it really that long). It was 3% of the value of what we shipped. Looking at that listing ship – which is by all accounts about to break apart – I am glad we did.
Auckland joins the 20th Century – just in time for the rugby
Filed under: Cost of living, Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views
One of the really odd things we found on our initial trips to NZ was the lack of an airport hotel at Auckland. With the number of international flights getting in at unsocial hours of the day, it seemed a big opportunity was being missed.
Now when I say airport hotel, I mean a hotel which is within a five minute walk or taxi ride of the terminal buildings. Not the closest hotel to the airport being a 20 minute taxi ride away. Which is what the situation at Auckland has been up until May 2011.
Plus of course as we have now discovered, the propensity of AirNZ to cancel direct flights to and from places (Wellington to anywhere out of the country for instance) and insisting that you have to bounce via Auckland to get out of the country. This means you fly back into Auckland really late, and either face a night in the terminal building or a journey of half an hour each way to get to a hotel. Because of course, AirNZ insist on booking you on the first (antisocial) flight out of Auckland to your onwards destination.
Arriving Auckland midnight sir? You’ll be wanting the 0630 flight on to Wellington then wont you?
Seriously, do these people not think! Six hours is too long to comfortably spend in either terminal overnight, since they do actually shut the things down as the traffic volume is nowhere near enough to justify keeping them open 24 hours – unlike Heathrow or Gatwick for example. But also too short to actually get somewhere else and get a decent amount of sleep.
<rant off>
We are now blessed with a Novotelat the airport. Which is within a 2 minute walk of the international terminal. Really, it is. They’ve built it at the end of the terminal where everyone piles out of customs & baggage reclaim bleery eyed and wondering where to go next. In fact, it’s between the ‘pay for your parking here’ parking meters, and the car park.
And it’s swanky. Somehow we got a room on one of the two ‘Premier’ floors, which seem to equate to the Executive rooms listed on the hotel website. Kudos to the receptionist who greeted us at somewhere around 2:30am in the morning – boy was he bright eyed and bushy tailed! Which was really nice to have someone checking us in who didn’t give off the ‘I’m on nights and I’m going to distribute the surliness around‘ attitude that you sometimes find. But also attentive enough to understand we were at the opposite end of bright eyed and that if a pillow had been placed on the counter we’d have probably fallen asleep there and then.
Very nice rooms, the latest entertainment options thought of etc. So if you happen to have a laptop or portable DVD player and want to watch a movie you’ve bought with you, you have all the normal cabling options available so you can plug the thing into the large screen TV in the room.
Plus the bar was still open gone 2am in the morning when we arrived on a delayed Fiji flight, with the coffee machine up and running at 6am at the bar in the morning when we have to ship out again for our Wellington return leg. When the website says it’s a 24 hour bar – its true.
Oh and they have very nice showers, with really good sound proofing in the rooms so we didn’t hear a single lift door go bing all night even though we were in a room next to the lift lobby.
Plus, like the Singapore Changi airport hotel, they’ll do rooms for during the day – but not buy the hour. Which is really handy for those late night flights out of Auckland which will take 12 sleepless hours to get anywhere.
So finally and just in time for the rugby world cup, Auckland has a decent airport hotel, yippeee!!
Big changes to immigration policy kept very quiet. Pt 2
While we were looking at this, we noticed that INZ published an update on the 8th July about changes to the skilled migrants policy. It hasn’t been in the papers – all that hit the news was the affect on foreign students and how much money NZ stands to lose if students stop coming here.
It’s still all about the money!
Anyway, as of 25th July 2011, you will now get less points for lower qualifications. So New Zealand is now tipping the points towards PhD’s.
But here is the real important bit, buried in the notes at the bottom. So vitally important to potential immigrants, yet snuck in with not a peep out of anyone.
Applicants with qualifications in an area of absolute skill shortage will no longer be able to automatically obtain residence without skilled employment.
That is actually a fundamental change to the way the Skilled Migrant Category works, and has always worked. Oddly enough, when it was first brought out it was always supposed to stop people getting visas without having a job. But you would never be able do that in a 2 part system where you can enter the pool (for a fee) with 100 points but you have to set the points level to be taken out of the pool so that people who needed the job offer to get to 100 points could be taken out. It would always be the case that some people could get higher points without a job offer and thus get selected from the pool.
In one phrase they have allowed themselves a “get out clause” to not select you from the pool if you do not have a job offer.
Now in principle, I have to kinda say that on one hand that is fine. To a point. We are still going through a world wide financial crisis, and NZ has a stonkingly major problem having to deal with one of its major cities being a pile of rubble. Giving jobs to immigrants at a time like that is perhaps not the best move. But only to a point. We still have skills shortages. Not everyone in Christchurch who needs work has the skills needed, and some people frankly do not want to leave their city. And while youth unemployment figures are apparently rising, unemployment for others isn’t, so there really isn’t a huge pool of workers available anyway.
So: the issue here – right now emigrating to New Zealand is harder than it was. Couple that with the fact that it is hideously expensive because of the crap exchange rates – you need to think REALLY hard about the pros and cons. Do you homework. And then do it again, but what ever you do – make sure you know your chances, you know the rules and you know what you are letting yourself in for.
If New Zealand is still your dream – then go for it. If you are not sure – wait. Immigration policy, like house prices and exchange rates runs in cycles, and it will get easier at some point.
Man bashes wife: he gets 2 years in NZ, she gets deported???
As with many of these articles in the papers about immigration, details in the article raises a number of questions of accuracy, but if this is in any way true – INZ should be ashamed.
A woman who has lived in New Zealand for four years and left her abusive husband has been denied residency because of his convictions for crimes against her.
Does that make any sense to anyone? Sure – deny him residency – if he has a conviction for domestic violence he doesn’t pass the clean record. I can see the process and procedure that means that she doesn’t get it – because shes the secondary applicant. So if he loses residency then so does she automatically. But is it right?
Timmons and her ex-husband, a plumber, and their two children arrived from London in 2007. He was granted a work permit and, in September 2008, lodged a residence application for the entire family under the skilled migrant category. Immigration New Zealand approved it in principle in February 2009.
The couple needed to send in their passports and a $1050 fee but Timmons left her husband before the process was completed. As a result, she and the children were illegal immigrants, and she was told she had to leave the country.
So she was, along with the husband, actually granted residency, but because she has the guts to leave an abusive husband, she has slipped through the gap.
What we don’t know from the article is whether or not she tried to get the residency visa, and was denied, or while spitting up with the abuser, didn’t actually send in the fee and passports. I personally don’t see how either of things should be insurmountable by a well staffed professional immigration department.
He left New Zealand for eight months before returning this year on a two-year visitor’s permit.
So how the &*%%*^%%*$*$ did he get back into New Zealand on a 2 year visitor permit if there is clearly a record of him being party to domestic violence? How did he get a 2 year visitors visa at all? Why on earth would immigration let anyone in the country on a 2 year visitor visa, when they have clearly tried to gain residency before, and appear to be looking to do so again.
An appeal to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal failed because it found there were “no exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature that would make it unjust or unduly harsh for the appellant to be removed”.
I cant find any link at the IPT to the case. In fact their online records decisions is pathetic – it looks like in changing the name of the department, someone seems to have forgotten that records should be kept up to date. If anyone manages to find it, please do let me know. This will actually have most of the details, and often fills in the gaps of the newspaper reporting. That being said, I have noticed that the IPT, and the RRB before them have a tendency to back INZ to the hilt. INZ have to really ticked someone off for a decision to be overturned by the tribunal.
Silver Fern Visa – Still causing mayhem for immigrants
Lincoln Tan reports that immigrants coming over to New Zealand on the new (well, since April 2010) Silver fern visa are taking low paid and crappy jobs to get through the system.
I blogged when it was first coming out:
So basically it’s a 9-month version of the old Job search visa – allowing you to find a job legally – which most people do anyway on a visitors visa. Having the Silver Fern Visa is not likely to make employers look at you any more favourably – but hey – you can try explaining it to them and see if they get it. They won’t.
And also – you aren’t apparently going to get Residency straight off – but a work to residency visa, –which as I’ve said before – is a bloody dangerous move right now. There are 300 places available and you need to be between 20 and 35 years old to qualify.
So, what has happened? Well according to the article:
Of the 293 visas issued last year, only 85 people have found work or received a job offer. Eighty have not found employment, 70 have left the country and 58 have yet to arrive.
That’s less than a 30% success rate.
Immigration New Zealand said the scheme had attracted young, skilled people despite the tight job market.
This makes no sense – it doesn’t matter how many people you can attract with a “Job Search” visa. There are many many thousands of people who would like to emigrate and come to New Zealand. The fact that INZ can find 300 people who want to live here is certainly no great shakes. The issue is – can those people actually get a residence visa that will allow them to stay here? It looks like not.
“It does not guarantee them employment,” said Immigration NZ chief Nigel Bickle.
“We’d advise them to research the labour market thoroughly to ensure jobs that match their skills and experience are available.”
The National Distribution Union said the scheme was flawed, and it wants Immigration New Zealand to review it.
“All that’s been happening is a repeat of the ‘rocket scientists driving taxis’ situation and clearly, many of those who came under the scheme feel they have been misled,” said migrant support co-ordinator Dennis Maga.
This is a major problem – it is very easy to be misled about your chances of successfully immigrating here. Many of us set our hearts on the move, and if people were to tell us that our chances were low of getting through – human nature says we will probably ignore it. However it is up to us as the immigrant to look beyond the hype and promises and make sure we know the rules and the chances of success – no matter what the glossy brochures and agents promise us.
Immigration New Zealand does not plan to review the policy.
Well, there’s a shock!
Remember: a Silver Fern Visa allows you to find a job in order to get a Work To Residence Visa which after 2 years can lead to a residency visa. IF you can get a job.
This is not the first time that the Silver Fern Visa has been in the news.
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What on earth are Immigration New Zealand up to?
It has been a bit of an odd time lately with Immigration News, and it is a bit hard to fathom the thinking behind some of the decisions being made. Now that isn’t to say that INZ are necessarily making the wrong decisions – but some of them seem a little barmy to be honest. So here are some of the recent stories, make of them what you will!
1. Carers on work visas being sent home.
I blogged about this a while back, but essentially, immigrants on work visas in the Christchurch area are being sent packing to allow more work to be available for Kiwis out of jobs because of the earthquakes. Now on the face of it hat sounds good – Immigration policy is meant to plug holes, and temporary work visas are meant to be just that – temporary- so that immigration can be flexible and allow for Kiwi workers to take jobs first.
This is really only a problem if, as reported, Kiwis are not taking those jobs: unemployment in the area stays high, and there aren’t enough staff to act as carers for the elderly.
2. But Work Visas are being extended for immigrants so they can stay and work during the Rugby World Cup.
Ok, I’m not a rugby fan at the best of times, but I am heartily sick of the country being turned upside down so that we appear to be polished and sparkling for the influx of visitors – because the heavens forfend that we look like we are a low wage economy that cant afford first class facilities!
But when Immigration Policy is being stretched or outright ignored, and kiwis would actually like and be willing to take those jobs – which they now cant because immigrants have them – well – that kinda stinks. This is not the purpose of Immigration Policy.
I think it also speaks volumes that Immigration will stretch the policy for Rugby, but not for elderly people in need of carers. Just shameful.
3.Immigration released a statement about Martin Payne.
Now, in the 6 years I have been writing about immigration on forums or blogs, I have never actually seen immigration respond to criticism in the press with a statement like this. I can only put it down to the sheer amount of backlash from Kiwis furious that a hard worker gets kicked out while others they deem to be “the usual bludgers” get to stay. Either than or they do indeed release statements and I have never noticed them of course.
The statement can be found here, and is well worth a read. The interesting thing is that in reading it, and the quoted Residence Review Board case, I personally felt that INZ had a point in as much as the latest Medical Assessor actually listed 10 reasons why Mr Payne did not have an acceptable standard of health. Compare that my Dad’s case where all the assessor could come with is “get more tests” – it actually looks like this guy had some nouse about him.
That’s not to say the system is fair. I would contend that INZ new full well when granting Mr Payne his business visa that we would not likely pass the test when it came to converting from a LTBV to residence, and let him in anyway – cos its all about the money!
The offensive bit is the RRB’s contention that in sending the Paynes back to the UK:
[58] The Board accepts there would be emotional harm, and possibly also
financial loss, but there is no reason to believe they would be serious. The couple
can, as the representative says, sell both the business and their house. As the
appellant has built the business up, it should sell for more than its cost, though
whether they would recoup all capital invested, the Board cannot know. Even so,
they arrived with substantial capital and will return with reasonable and perhaps
even substantial capital.
what a load of crock! They came here when exchange rates were pretty ropey anyway, and the world wasn’t in financial turmoil. I would like to see the RRB members cope with being forced to sell up and shift round the world. The only thing in the Payne’s Favour is that the exchange rate going back to the UK works in their favour this time. As long as the reduction in property values here don’t offset that. Still – I think it takes a certain amount of heartlessness to make a comment like this. Of course the emotional harm is serious!
Besides – when will INZ and the NZ Government make some serious change to this ridiculous $25,000 limit on health care costs? They really need to get a grip!
4. Immigration has backtracked on the carers in Christchurch.
National MP Nicky Wagner organised a meeting between Immigration New Zealand staff, rest-home providers and caregivers in Christchurch last week.
INZ head Nigel Bickle said Christchurch staff used the meeting to ensure employers understood immigration requirements and made genuine attempts to find New Zealand citizens or residents to fill vacancies.
He said labour market advice after the quake showed there were about 600 vacancies at rest-homes. About half of them were caregivers, which meant new work visas could not be issued because there were New Zealanders available to do the jobs.
“The labour market situation has since changed, and from early May, Work and Income has advised that there are no longer New Zealanders available,” Bickle said.
You notice that there is no admission whatsoever that they may just have screwed up a tiny little bit?
5. Immigration backtracked on Martyn Payne’s Visa
However, in the decision released today, Mr Bickle said new information presented to them has shed light on the case, and Mr Payne has since been granted an eight-month visa to stay in the country and work. He will also get up-to-date health assessments from New Zealand specialists and from there will be able to apply for residence.
“There are still concerns about Mr Payne’s health but we’ve taken into account all the circumstances,” Mr Bickle says.
He says Mr Payne’s case has highlighted how difficult it can be to make decisions around cases that do not meet health requirements.
“The decision to grant Mr Payne a new visa today gives him time to get all the information required for a new residence application and return to running his service station in Northland,” he said.
So, he gets anther crack at the whip, and a chance to present more medical information. My only question is – what if the medical information shows the issue is still getting worse? (Which is INZ’s contention). This is still no guarantee of a residence visa – but I personally suspect that one will be granted – this is just INZ trying to save face.
I also think what this case highlights is not the difficulty of making decisions around health cases – I feel it highlights the utter uselessness of the health policy! $25,000 is nothing in medical terms these days. It’s also nothing compared to the benefit the migrant brings. It also shows that the Medical Waiver is usually a waste of time – I have so rarely read of cases where they were granted – and the reason given is usually the reason that residence was originally turned down. It is supposed to look at other factors.
So all in all – I can’t say INZ are doing very well right now. Odd that.
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Making the most of the crap exchange rate – Lightsabres are cheap :)
Filed under: Cost of living, General Budgeting, Getting to New Zealand, Life in New Zealand
Let’s face it – the fact that £1 wont even get you a measly $2 on some days right now makes emigrating to New Zealand hideously expensive. When we bought our house, the rate was at $2.50 or there abouts, and we were practically crying our eyes out then! Right now, we need to bring over about $10,000 worth of £UK to pay for our upgraded insulation – it’s the difference between it costing about £3,500 and £5,000. It is no laughing matter.
Multiply that up for anyone wanting to emigrate and buy a piece of New Zealand? Well -we originally paid $135,000 as a deposit, bringing over about £54,000 which was the money we had from selling our UK home. That meant we had to take out a $265,000 mortgage. At current rates, that £54,000 would only get us about $108,000, increasing the mortgage we need to take out to $292,000.
The cost of the fall in the exchange rate for us personally would have been $27,000 in extra borrowing needed, and that pales once you look at the interest you need to pay over the life of the mortgage.
But is it all bad news?
There is a pale glimmer of good news in amongst the pain – and that is – it’s cheap to buy goods from other countries. We have spoken before about the hundreds of $$$ we save at Christmas by buying books from Amazon.co.uk rather than already overpriced NZ bookshops.
But this week, we saved about $140 on an amazingly cool purple Lightsabre (Mace Windu for my fellow geeks), courtesy of ThinkGeek.com, and the otherwise crap exchange rate.
From Reel Collectibles in New Zealand this would cost $329, plus $12 shipping. From ThinkGeek it costs $US99 , plus $US50 shipping. With a margin for the bank – because they can and they will always syphon a bit off, that came to $ 193.97 NZD.
I make that a saving of $147.03.
Or basically, the cost of a second lightsabre. Or 36 coffees for the non geeks. (Star wars Vs Coffee – Star Wars wins – it’s a close call though!)
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Where to live in the world?
It’s index time, apparently, with the OECD Better Life Index & Vision of Humanity Global Peace Index coming out with their best places to live in the world annual surveys.
The OECD survey is quite interesting as it allows you to give weight to particular things you care about, be that quality of life, jobs, income etc. They do produce a summary report with analysis which makes fascinating reading.
Everything being equal, NZ only scores bottom in the ‘employee’s working very long hours’ category – which appears to mostly be driven by the relatively low average income. Although at least the Aussie’s & the UK score badly for that factor too. Turkey skews the average results a bit by having a very high level of weekly hours worked. So 10 out of 38 are ‘above average’.
At $18k USD NZ average income is below the OECD average. Interestingly this compares with being the seventh best in terms of levels of employment, and fourth ‘best’ for long term unemployment (i.e. fourth lowest).
(Another) interesting outcome is that NZ comes second, behind Sweden, for environmental factors. As it turns out this is actually a measure of pollution in the air in cities of over 100,000 people (NZ=7, Sweden=5). Which as a generalisation for the majority of the population is probably a fair assessment.
We’ve mentioned the GPI before, and this year it puts NZ second place – behind Iceland. So assuming you ignore the bankrupt banks, stagnant economy, exploding volcano’s – sure Iceland is a great place to be. We’ll ignore our own earthquakes, buggered-ish economy and the Rugby World Cup for the moment.
Funnily enough the NZ drop in score is for curious reasons;
More Police officers – delivering on a Govt pledge to put ‘more police on the street’;
More people in prison – possibly linked to the greater number of Police;
And an increase in involvement in International conflict! I hadn’t noticed NZ invading any other countries recently and I don’t think lots of Kiwi’s going to Aus really counts as an invasion let alone a conflict. Unless they were thinking of the international jousting tourney in Taupo?
ho hum.
Honestly – not the best policy ;)
Once again, a mother may be forced to leave New Zealand, meaning either he Kiwi born child has to leave with her and not see his father, or stay and be parted from his mother.
Ferisita Sapalia, who is Indonesian, and was married to a Kiwi Citizen (origianlly from France). They had a child, but thier marriage broke down last year. Ferisita did the right thing and advised INZ of the change in circumstances, as she was applying for residency under the partnership scheme.
Not telling INZ would mean effectively not passing the Good Character requirements necessary to immigrate here. Telling INZ means as far as they are concerned she is no longer eligible for residency.
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