# From Canada to New Zealand



## CantoNZ (Nov 18, 2015)

Hello everyone 
We are for the past seven years living in Canada in Alberta. We have great jobs here and nice place to live and we are mostly happy here except for the cold and snow. My brother lives in Auckland and lately we are having some discussions on moving to NZ. Primarily Canada has been a great place to live but we are losing our enthusiasm since we have too much snow where we live and long winters. We are in our late thirties and one kid and we are kind of looking forward to a laid back kind of lifestyle. We have also thought to moving to other places inside Canada and except for Vancouver there is no other place where we can escape snow and cold. So I will be very thankful if you can answer my few questions to help us decide on our move:
Should we apply for jobs from Canada and is it do-able?
Or should we apply for EOI to work in NZ...I mean has anyone got a visa and residency status through that procedure?
What will be the best place to move in NZ besides Auckland?
Also NZ or Australia....which one is better?

Thanks for your time and I will be looking forward to your responses.


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## escapedtonz (Apr 6, 2012)

CantoNZ said:


> Hello everyone
> We are for the past seven years living in Canada in Alberta. We have great jobs here and nice place to live and we are mostly happy here except for the cold and snow. My brother lives in Auckland and lately we are having some discussions on moving to NZ. Primarily Canada has been a great place to live but we are losing our enthusiasm since we have too much snow where we live and long winters. We are in our late thirties and one kid and we are kind of looking forward to a laid back kind of lifestyle. We have also thought to moving to other places inside Canada and except for Vancouver there is no other place where we can escape snow and cold. So I will be very thankful if you can answer my few questions to help us decide on our move:
> Should we apply for jobs from Canada and is it do-able?
> Or should we apply for EOI to work in NZ...I mean has anyone got a visa and residency status through that procedure?
> ...


Hi and welcome to the forum. 

Yes you can apply for a job from overseas and it is do-able to actually be successful in getting a job offer but all depends on your line of work and how desperate an employer is for your skills. 
If your skills or more to the point your occupation is on the skill shortage list it doesn't mean it'll be easy to secure work here from overseas.
People who have the right experience and qualifications in certain skill areas find it easier but I'd say only the ones that are specialised.
In the majority of cases you may find employers aren't even interested in you or don't even want to speak to you. Others will just say "come back to us when you are in NZ and have the visa to work".

If you have sufficient points in relation to the skilled migrant visa category then why not just submit the EOI without a job offer. To guarantee selection of the EOI, you will need at least 140 points. If you have between 100 and 135 points you'll have zero chance unless you also have a job offer in the mix.
Also be aware that an application without a job offer is likely to take at least 12 months assuming your EOI is selected from the pool and nothing is wrong with any of your evidence to support your application at the ITA stage - eg police reports or medicals etc.

We applied via the Skilled Migrant Category without a job offer and secured resident visas. The whole process took us 15 months from EOI submission to getting the letter to say we'd been accepted and then another 4-6 weeks till the passports were back with the visa stickers attached.
We did run in to an issue that my better half's medical was passed to the medical assessor which probably delayed us 6 months or so. Just pointing out that it does happen this way.
It was only after we had the visas and had booked flights and shipping etc did any employers become interested. 

We found that having a desire to go to a particular place doesn't work as it seriously limits your ability to land a job so you move to wherever you get a job and then work from there depending if that area works for you or not. If you get multiple offers then there's a possibility of some choice.
For me, I got 2 offers at the same time, with both (in the long term) being based in Wellington. It was then a sit down with the family to weigh up the best opportunity for us. Wellington was fine but we didn't feel it offered us what we wanted so after 2.5 years we moved up to Tauranga and I managed to get a transfer so remained in the same job.

No idea about Oz really. Been for a few days to a tiny part of it which was awesome. I keep getting told its decent wages but high taxes and high cost of living? 
We did start with Oz when considering emigration but didn't take long to discount it for us.


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