And finally we can go back to NZ ...

For most of the trip our final destination was always a bit in suspense!. We could not enter NZ unless our residency application was successful or immigration figured out how to get us a temporary visa (since we had hit our limit of a max stay of 12 months / 24 months).

Our legal team (Karsten and Julie from NZ Immigration Concepts) did a great job, filed all the papers soon after we handed it to him and followed up with the immigration department on a regular basis. We were fortunate to get a very understanding officer (i'll use the initials JD, since i'd like to avoid mentioning the name of the person) look at our papers. All things fell in place at just the right time. We recd a letter a week before we left India about an interview in Christchurch before our application could be finalized. We explained to JD over email about our situation and our unsuccessful try at getting a visa at the LA embassy.

At this point, JD suggested it might be easier to do a phone interview and potentially finalize the application immediately. This would enable us to bypass the entire visa application process and get a residence permit (and returning resident visa). We had the phone interview last tuesday on our way to the web access office. We clarified a few things with JD and seemed satisfied with the answers. There was a minor hitch, since she was not aware that we were working full time on CiviCRM and assumed we would be looking for a job. We exchanged some more email and on thursday we recd our residence permit via email. We paid out migrant levy fees and confirmed that we would obtain the permit in Singapore. We got the permit on our passports earlier today at the NZ immigration office in SG.

Overall it was an incredibly smooth and excellent process. We managed to get the residence permit in approx 5 months which is quite cool considering the amount of paperwork and back and forth that needed to happen. Being able to talk directly to your case officer is so beneficial and smooths the process a lot. The Bureau of Immigration in the US might want to learn a bit from their NZ counterparts :)

So the uncertainty is off, and kinda glad to know that we can stick to our original plans and go back to cool Nelson. Hopefully we have not missed most of the summer. We are off to PI in the morning