Our ITAs arrived!

Skry and I got back from the Netherlands two days ago, and our ITAs were here waiting for us! Well, his was -- I had to collect mine from the post office today, as it required a signature, and there was nobody at my house to sign for it when the postman called.

I am really surprised that the ITAs arrived so quickly. They are dated 17 July, which was only a few weeks after our EOIs were submitted. I fully expected us to be waiting two or three months before we heard anything, but it looks like we've been put in the fast lane for some reason. Maybe the London branch of the NZIS is catching up on its backlog.

It's all good news, anyway. Now we need to start getting our documentation together. The biggest two things are the police certificates (we both need certificates both from the UK and from the Republic of Ireland) and the medical checks. There are two immigration panel doctors available in Belfast, so we'll have to see about getting an appointment with one of them. We've got less than four months to get everything together, so the clock seems to be ticking quite loudly already!

Post #1 - The Background

So, my boyfriend Skry and I are moving from Northern Ireland to New Zealand. Hoping to, anyway! I thought it'd be interesting to blog our progress, both for me to see how far we have come, and for other people who are thinking about emigrating.

We submitted our EOIs (forms expressing our interest in obtaining permanent residency visas) towards the end of June 2006, and both of us were selected from the pool of applicants in the very next draw after we submitted, which was fantastic. Applicants need at least 100 points to even be considered, and we were lucky enough to have 115 points (Skry) and 125 points (me), but it was still uncertain if either or both of us would be selected. It was great that we both got selected at the same time.

Last Friday we each got a letter from NZIS (New Zealand immigration), confirming that we had been selected from the pool of applicants. The next step is for NZIS to send us the ITAs, Invitations to Apply, which should be sometime in the next two or three months. We then have four months to gather all our supporting documentation (degree certificates, proof of work experience, birth certificates, and the like) and have our medicals done. Skry doesn't like needles, so he's not looking forward to that last bit! But hopefully it will all be pretty straightforward.

I still haven't told my family about our plans to leave Ireland. I'm not sure whether they'll think it's a good idea or a bad one, but for the moment I'm just keeping it under my hat. It's not that I don't want them to know; it's just such early days, and we could be waiting the best part of a year for our visas to finally come through. Then we have another 12 months to get ourselves over there. It just seems a bit early at this stage to start rocking the family boat...