Living in Limbo

“for the week ending 5 December 2008 we are allocating files lodged up to and including 23 September 2008”

This is what it has been saying on the New Zealand Immigration Service (London Branch) website since, well, since just after 5th December. I hope they will be updating it soon. And I hope that the gap doesn’t get (too much) greater. Obviously it will be a bit longer because of the Christmas and New Year break.

I calculate the wait (23 Sept to 5 Dec) to be 54 working days. We submitted our application on 17th November. The same number of working days on from then would be 5th February (I assumed no work on Christmas Eve). If nothing got done between Christmas and New Year then 54 days will be 11th February. So I’m not expecting any news on our application before then, but hope that we will be allocated a case officer not long after that. I was told that the time between being assigned a case officer and getting a decision should be between one and three months. The longer time being if there are problems such as medical problems or child custody dificulties. We passed our medicals and have no children. Well, I have adult children but they are not coming with us so have no affect on the application.

Why the counting of days like a child waiting for the school holidays, or for Christmas? Well, until we have a decision and, hopefully, the prized ‘blue stickers’ that are permanant residence visas in our passports, we are living in limbo.

I have just read a post from someone on one of the NZ emigration forums that they have just got their approval. They submitted almost exactly two months before us. So maybe we will get ours in two months time? Yes, there are lots of other factors that can influence the length of time. Staff being off sick with the lurgy, people with job offers jumping up the queue, any queries they have on our application. But a girl’s gotta have some hope.

I walked out of my job last August. I couldn’t stand it any longer and it was making me ill. Because I’m not going to be in the country for much longer (I hope) I can’t really take a new permanent job. I’ve registered with a temp agency but then the so-called ‘credit crunch’ hit so there is little or no temp work around.

So I am at home. Lots of time to tidy up, clear out, decorate; do or organise repairs; investigate removal companies, flights, stop over options; investigate and deal with remortgages, letting agents, etc. That’s the theory. But how much to pack away when I don’t know how long I’ll still be living here? How can I book flights when I don’t know when we will be leaving? More urgently, how do I get motivated to get off my backside and do stuff – in the middle of winter when I suffer from SAD and a strong urge tohibernate – when the answer to ‘how long have we got?’ is ‘how long is a piece of string?

So I’ve set myself a date. I’m telling myself that we are leaving on 31st March. I’ve set the date for a party: 21st February. The party is not just to say goodbye to people but also to celebrate our honours degrees (which we both gained in December) and my 50th birthday (January). Before Christmas the end of March still seemed to be a long way off. Now I need to be counting down the weeks. After all, we might just manage to make that deadline anyway.

Not that we have to be gone then. Once we have the visas we can wait for up to twelve months before getting to New Zealand. We might decide that things here are good enough to stay for a bit longer and earn more money to take over. But I need to plan as if that isn’t the case, so I am prepared.

Now I’m off to get off my bum and clear out more things.

Tags: emigrate, emigration, limbo, motivation