Kerri and Kyle – Our Journey To New Zealand

Kyle and I had vaguely thought about emigrating to NZ for a while. Then my Dad emigrated with IML’s help and we decided to follow him. Even before we knew we were eligible to go to NZ, I started collating the necessary documents as my Dad had told me what a long process this could be.

It took us under 3 months to find ourselves living and working in New Zealand. Both Kyle and I now have jobs. Our daughter, aged 13 and our son, aged 3, have both settled well. Our daughter is doing really well at school and is in a year above her age. She’s made lots of friends, including some South Africans. Our son is now at preschool full time and loves it.

Kyle and I only arrived 4 weeks ago, and, in that time, we found jobs, settled the kids into the right schools for them, got a car and rented a house – we feel really blessed.

We had a great, if long, flight with Mango from PE to Jo’burg and then Qantas, via Sydney to New Zealand. The only hiccup was Kyle’s fishing gear which was picked up and examined at every airport. We were surprised to find that there were two sets of customs to go through in Wellington.

Kyle and I had booked a hostel in Wellington for a couple of nights. We arrived at 1.30 am and felt so wide awake that we decided to go for a walk. You certainly wouldn’t do that in South Africa! We met a couple of guys wearing suits who’d obviously been out to some business function. They stopped and chatted and even offered us somewhere to stay if we were stuck. We’ve found this with all the Kiwis we’ve met. They are friendly and want to do everything they can to help us settle quickly.

We hired a car from Apex Rental for 2 days while we tried to get finance for a vehicle of our own. This we did within the two days of arriving in New Zealand. The vehicle we bought had a problem, so the garage took it back for a few hours to fix it. This meant we were late returning the hire car. They were so nice about it and didn’t charge us for the extra time. We used Google maps to get around at first, but we’re now familiar with our area so we don’t use it locally any more.

It was a joy getting my car New Zealand driving licence. My South African licence had expired, and I was still waiting for my new one. I put in the application in August and it arrived at my mother-in-law’s in November. In NZ, I received my licence in 5 days, even though they quoted 10.

The fact that we also managed to rent a house in the first two days we were there was also amazing. It’s fully furnished, so with that and the fact that people have helped us with a few things, we haven’t had to buy anything. We left South Africa with just our clothes, having sold everything before we left, so this has been a great bonus for us.

Kyle and I decided that, even if we could have gone through the whole process on our own, we wanted to get professional help. We’d heard of too many people not being accepted just because a particular document was missing or incorrect. My Dad had used IML and he recommended IML and Bernard to us. Bernard was exceptionally helpful, explaining the whole process in detail. Dr Bernhardt Kreber was also an integral part of our successful application. He gave us information on visas and the documentation we needed to apply.

Our advice to people wanting to emigrate to New Zealand is to use Immigration Migration Ltd. We know people who’ve used other agencies and had bad experiences, so it’s important to go with the right agency, one that’s efficient, professional and successful. That’s why we chose IML.