Good things and bad things

First the good: The Boy (aka Matt) finally arrived in New Zealand last Saturday, after many delays and much nail-biting tension! We had hoped that our permanent residence (PR) application would be through in time for him to enter the country as a resident. But the delay with regard to that is the 'bad' part of this post. :-(

When we realized that PR would not be timeously forthcoming, we looked for the best Plan B. This ended up being an application for an urgent visitor visa, but we made it more difficult by asking that they waive the requirements for 'proof of onward travel' and 'proof of funds to support himself while in NZ'. This obviously because he was coming out with the intention of staying for good, and because he would be living at home with us. The London dept of the INZ turned up trumps and provided him with exactly this, within three days of the request being made! We had included tons of info and documentation to back these requests up, and had also referred them to our case officer (CO) here in Wellington. However, due to uncertainties around timing, we ended up having to postpone his flight a second time and so he finally flew into Wellington Airport last Saturday at 3.30 pm.

What an amazing moment that was. Right up to the minute he walked through the arrivals gate, I was still sure that something would go wrong ... that he'd been given the wrong visa, lost his passport, missed a connecting flight, been stolen by white slave traders in Hong Kong .. you name it and I imagined it! The fact that he was uncontactable by mobile phone throughout the trip didn't help either. But all of that fell away in an instant when I caught sight of his dear face in the midst of the crowd. More tears, but this time they were simply tears of joy.

This last week has been one of those Welly Specials in terms of the weather. Wind, rain, sleet, clouds ... and then to top it off, we got hit by a storm described by the Met Services as 'the largest storm on the planet' and 'a storm the size of Australia'! For the last 36 hours, the country as a whole has been pounded by winds gusting up to 150km in spots, sudden vicious thunderstorms with something like 2000 lightning strikes, heavy rains leading to flooding, mini-tornados ripping houses apart, and storm surges of six to nine metres off the West Coast. Here in Welly we are reasonably well protected, but still had a LOT of wind and rain.

The bad thing is the ridiculously long time it is taking our PR application to be approved. We submitted our Expression Of Interest in July 2009. It was accepted and within a few weeks, we received our Invitation to Apply. We submitted this in early January 2010 along with a couple of thousand pieces of paper as supporting documentation. Our CO made contact at the end of February. In March, she asked for more information which we supplied. In early June, they asked for more evidence to prove that Matt is in fact still a dependent child, and more importantly still dependent on me (and not his dad) seeing as I am the principle applicant for PR. I provided them with everything I could by the 22nd June deadline. Then this last stretch of waiting started and it has proven more stressful than anything else up to now. Despite being in contact with the CO (who says she has no problems at all with the application) and despite the London office taking a look at the application (and on that basis granting Matt his one-way entry visitor visa), and despite my sending multiple emails and eventually a letter of complaint, we are Still Waiting for approval.

Without PR, we cannot do things like apply for university places as domestic students or apply for bank loans for housing. The not-knowing is becoming very very stressful ... and this is before we even get to the point of making decisions regarding those university applications, especially in terms of figuring out how to pay for everything - another trick of fate appeared earlier this year in the form of a change in student loan policy. Used to be you could get your PR and immediately be eligible to apply for a no-interest, government-sponsored student loan for tuition fees. Not any more, though. Now, new residents have to be resident for TWO YEARS before being allowed to access the loan system known as StudyLink.

But one grumble at a time. Today I am happy to have Matt here, happy that Livi made it safely back from her awesome skiing trip to Mt Ruapehu, and happy to simply be alive and well and living in beautiful New Zealand!