Getting a visa to live in New Zealand

“New Zealanders believe life is for living. It’s about balancing a good day’s work with time for family and friends. Explore the new life that you and your family could enjoy in New Zealand.”

This is the quote from the New Zealand immigration website. Sounds inviting, doesn’t it.  This is a first in our series of posts exploring what is on offer, how to get to and what the entry requirements are for various countries around the world.

New Zealand rates extremely highly, consistently in various life surveys.  It was rated second in the world for work-life balance in HSBC’s 2015 Expat Explorer survey.   With Auckland rated third in the world by Mercers 2015 quality of life survey.

There are lots of opportunities for people from the UK looking to move permanently to New Zealand and their immigration website has a tool to help you find the options available to you based on age, reasons for moving, whether you have a job offer or not.

Unless you are joining family of have an existing work offer you are likely to be applying for a Skilled Migrant Visa.  Essentially you need to be under 55, have enough money to support your stay, not have previous convictions and meet their character requirements.

Out of the options available its worth taking time to see what is on offer, different visa routes have different requirements, take different amounts of time and fees associated with them.  Its also worth remembering that UK residents can stay for 3 months a year in New Zealand (as long as you are not working) on with a visitors visa.  So, its worth making use of this whilst you explore location, potential job and other options beforehand.