My partner is a New Zealander, can I apply for a Permanent Resident Visa?

New Zealanders love to travel far and wide. We often meet someone special on these travels, fall in love, and live offshore for several years experiencing life abroad with our foreign partners. At some point, we like to return home to New Zealand with our foreign partners and either live in Aotearoa for a few years, or settle down in New Zealand for good.

The New Zealand immigration system allows New Zealanders to support their partners visas through their partnership visa categories. You may qualify for a partnership based resident visa if you have lived with your New Zealand citizen or resident partner for 12 months or more. Even better, as an expats partner you may qualify to go straight to a permanent resident visa if you have lived together, offshore, for 5 years or more. A permanent resident visa is granted with zero travel conditions, meaning you can travel freely to New Zealand to live, and leave again, and your permanent resident visa will not expire. In contrast, a resident visa is granted with 24 months of travel conditions, if you are offshore when the resident visa is granted you must enter New Zealand within the first 12 months to start your resident visa. A resident visa does not expire while you are onshore in New Zealand, however, after 24 months your travel conditions will expire and if you go offshore with expired travel conditions your resident visa will expire. You must hold your resident visa for 24 months and meet certain criteria (like showing a commitment to living in New Zealand) to be eligible to apply for a permanent resident visa.

Processing times for permanent/resident visas can be long, but there are temporary partnership based work visas you can apply for if you want to come to New Zealand while your resident visa is being decided by immigration.

When it comes to preparing your application, nothing can be more straightforward than employing a professional to guide you through the process. If you want to know more about immigrating to New Zealand, get in touch with liza@reachnzimmigration.com today.