When you move to another country, you undoubtedly will require an immigration visa of some sort in order to legally live there. The process can be long and frustrating, but there are a few things you can do to help move things along when you’re moving abroad.
When to apply for a visa
The moment you know you’re moving to a new country, you should immediately initiate the visa application process! Visas can take weeks, months or even years to get approved so the sooner you start, the better.
Where to gather visa information
The best place to go for information about immigrating to your new country is the country’s official immigration website run by the government. With any luck, the country you wish to move to will have lots of easy-to-follow information online, like the excellent Immigration New Zealand website. Be careful about getting information from unofficial sources, as any misinformation could set you back significantly or worse, ruin your ability to obtain a visa.
If the country you’re moving to has a website, chances are you’ll also be able to do at least part of the application process online. Again, make sure you’re using the official government site to apply as there are companies out there (both legitimate and fraudulent) who will submit applications for you, and you want to make sure you’re not unintentionally signing up with one of those companies.
Choosing your visa
The specific visa you apply for will be dictated by your reasons for moving (like for work), how long you intend to stay, who is coming with you, and possibly other factors such as your age.
Probably the easiest way to get an immigration visa is to have a job offer. If you want to move to a certain country, try looking for a job there first. If you’re able to land one, obtaining a visa is often much easier. If your partner and/or child(ren) are coming with you, they can usually apply for spouse and child visas that will be tied to your work visa. That’s what we did when we moved to New Zealand – I already had a job offer, so I applied for a work visa and Chris and Phoenix applied for visas based on mine.
If you don’t have a job offer, you may still be able to get a visa. Some countries offer visas to people with skills they need in the country (even if you don’t have a concrete job offer) which may be easier to get instead of a more generic visa.
Approval for a short-term work visa tends to be easier and faster to get than an open-ended resident visa, and often you become eligible to apply for a resident visa once you’ve been on the limited work visa for a certain amount of time. Especially if you want to enter the country as soon as possible, a short-term work visa may be a good place to start and then you can consider applying for a more long-term visa once you’re legally living and working in the country.
The cost of visas
You will likely have to pay to apply for your visa, and it’s likely not going to be cheap. Start setting aside money right away so you’re not hit with the shock of paying for everything at once! If you have a job offer, try negotiating financial support for your move to help cover the visa costs.
To give you an idea of costs, applying for a two year work visa for New Zealand (depending on your country of origin) will set you back around $580 NZD; applying for a long-term skilled migrant resident visa will be more in the range of $3500 NZD for both the expression of interest and then the application once you’re invited to apply. And that’s just the application fee! Other fees you will likely end up paying include (with roughly what we paid per adult):
- Visa photos – $20 USD (~$33 NZD)
- Fingerprinting – $25 USD (~$35 NZD)
- Criminal record check for any country you’ve lived in for 1+ years – $250 CDN (~$275 NZD) for a Canadian record check from outside the country
- Medical exam – $350 USD (~$575 NZD)
- Chest X-rays – $100 USD (~$150 NZD)
- Notarized copies of documents – $150 USD ($15 for each page of things like birth certificates, professional certificates and passports; ~$250 NZD)
- Courier to send in a paper application (for resident visa; the short-term work visa can be done online) – $80 USD (~$130 NZD)
Total Additional Expenses: Approximately $925 USD (~$1526 NZD)
Grand Total Including Application Fees:
- For Short-Term Work Visa: Approximately $910 USD (~$1500 NZD)
- For Long-Term Resident Visa: Approximately $3942 USD (~$5028 NZD)
Keep in mind that this is the cost for the main visa application. Additional costs will apply if your partner or child(ren) are also applying for visas, although the totals above are not per person since the application fees for partner and child visas are often lower than the main visa applicant’s fees. Also, children may not need things like chest X-rays, which reduces the cost a bit more.
As you can see, applying for an immigration visa is not a cheap endeavor, so preparing yourself for the financial hit ahead of time can help!
Other tips
- Start collecting the information and documents you need early. Read our post on what documents you’ll need when moving abroad to help you plan.
- Confirm that everything has arrived at each point along the way. We didn’t find out that our chest x-rays hadn’t been submitted until the immigration office told us our medical portion was incomplete. We thought it was taken care of but it turns out we’d gone to the wrong place to have our X-rays taken so the radiologist hadn’t reviewed them and the doctor’s office hadn’t submitted them and never bothered to let us know. Even though the doctor’s office really should have called us, had we thought to call and confirm they received the X-rays, we would’ve sped up our application by a couple of weeks!
- Where possible, apply online. It’s faster, easier, cheaper, and more reliable!
- If you have the option of sending notarized copies rather than sending in originals and having them mailed back, send the copies. It’ll cost you more but at least you won’t be without your important documents for a long period of time and there’s no risk of them getting lost in transit! Keep in mind that some visas may require that you do send the originals, especially your passport, so you may not be able to avoid sending them in entirely.
- Keep records of dates, costs, submissions, and correspondence. You’ll want to stay on top of how long the process is taking, what you’ve already submitted, and what you need to do next so you don’t miss anything. Try to develop a way of tracking everything that makes sense to you, whether that’s jotting everything down in a notebook, creating a spreadsheet, or either printing things or for a paper folder or saving things in an electronic folder. Tell us if you’ve come up with a system you think works really well!
Have you applied for an immigration visa? Do you have any tips you would add?
Parents on a Plane ✈️ 