How long?

[stevejan]

We have our medicals in a weeks time and once we get the results we shall be ready to submit our ITA. Steve has not got a job offer yet and we were wondering what is the fastest turnaround for getting your residency sticker without a job offer. We have been told anything from 6 weeks to 6 months!! Hope it's not the latter. :icon_frown:

[k-k]

Hi stevejan

When I handed in our ITA the advisor told me it could take 1-3 months to be assigned a case officer then upto another 4 months to be processed.

In actual fact we had an email from our case officer exactly 8 weeks after handing in the ITA to arrange the interview which was held about 4 days after that. Following the interview we had a letter a few days later along with all our documents saying we'd been approved in principle.

We were also without job offers and I'd been following the progress of other people on the forums and it appears 8 weeks is about the norm for submitting ITA to interview. After that I think it's a few weeks to have your passport with PR sticker returned. (we didn't sumit our passports with the ITA so it'll be a bit longer for us)

Hope this helps
k-k

[stevejan]

Thanks k-k
We hope ours is no longer than this. Did you hand your ITA in in person? We've heard that sometimes they will interview you there and then if they are not too busy.

[selchie]

We also have no job offer, and were told it would take about 3 months before a case worker was assigned, and perhaps another month for processing. This works well for us, because we won't be ready to go for a while yet.

[k-k]

Stevejan

I did hand our ITA into NZ House in person. All the advisor did was check that all the documents were present, i.e tied in with the checklist. I pointed out a few things regarding the documents but she didn't make a note of them. I received a receipt for the documents and that was that.

I read somewhere on the forums that somebody had their interview at the same time but I think that she was extremely lucky, I've not seen anyone mention that happening to them since. I wouldn't hold up much hope of this happening even if you did turn up on a quiet day.

I emailed our case officer last week to make sure she'd received our passports and some last minute documents she wanted. She replied saying the passports were there but she hadn't looked at them, that was 2 weeks after she'd received them. You can't guarantee that just because you are on the ball that they will be any quicker when dealing with you.

It's all just a waiting game and depending on how soon you want to go, it can be a very stressful wait.

Get your ITA in asap making sure you've provided everything they may need then they've no excuse for it taking any longer than necessary.

Good luck
Karen

[stevejan]

Hi Karen
Thanks for all the info - not such good news though. We just had our medicals today and will get the results in 10-14 days when we will submit our ITA (all being well with medicals).
We were hoping to be out there by February but unless Steve is successful in getting a job that is looking very unlikely. We initially wanted to be in nz by the end of January (Steve was on the brink of a job offer some weeks ago, but it fell through) as we wanted the boys to be able to start the new school year with all the other kids, which we believe is February!
Never mind we'll just have to hope Steve gets a job offer soon and, like everyone else, we will continue to play the waiting game.
Jan