Let's get back to emigrating.
My wife and I had to make a decision, probably one of the most difficult decisions of our lives. Leaving family and friends, your country of birth and everything you know for the unknown.
The decision making process has to start somewhere. Random thoughts were going through my head, when do we want to emigrate, why do we want to emigrate, where to and many more. The WHY was probably the easiest to decide on. We all know what horrible state South Africa is in. I am not going to go into detail here. just google a bit and enough headlines will pop up.😞
The WHEN question was a bit more difficult, soo many aspects had to fall in place to make that decision properly, but I knew soon, as soon as we can get everything in place. Now came the BIG question, TO WHERE? This is where hours and hours of research came in. Reading up on different countries, the culture, immigration policy, work availability, safety, the climate and just about anything we could read about. We joined Facebook groups of different countries where discussions and tips were given on immigration for specific countries. We contacted people directly through them to get their opinions. I joined forums and read posts and more posts and asked questions. I did job searches and looked at salary scales for my experience to determine what I would be able to earn. I went to cost of living comparison sites and had a look there. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/comparison.jsp We read some more, articles on which countries are safe, why people choose them and spent more hours on research. In the end we had our shortlist, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. We ruled out Canada fairly early as I did not qualify. We did speak to people we knew that had emigrated to Canada. The climate and weather and cost did also not tick our boxes. Ireland was high up on our list to go to. The weather did bother us slightly, what was positive for us for Ireland was that we were closer to family, so time and cost of travel was less. In the end we ruled Ireland out as well due to lengthy citizenship process, cost of living and a few other points.
That left us Australia and New Zealand. A lot of people we know moved to Australia. We had a chat to a few of them, emailed a few, and started making our pros and cons list for Australia. Visa's for accountants was filling up fast, so we lodged an expression of interest. Cost a lot in Rands to pay the agent and the fee. Then Australian immigration decided to up the points for accountants....I knew I will never get an invite. My wife was not happy with the Australian choice. She kept on saying there are too many things that can kill you there. On a forum I followed a thread with regard to why they chose New Zealand above Australia and the one response was "There are too many Australians"😂
We seriously started looking into New Zealand. One of my searches revealed an article of the 10 safest countries to live in and New Zealand was ranked 2nd. Here is the latest report at date of writing this post. http://www.worldpopulationreview.com/countries/safest-countries-in-the-world/
New Zealand is very family orientated and that ticked our boxes as well. Two things we were worried about, one was the weather and the other the high suicide rate, especially under children. The pros topped the cons and the decision was made. Next step was looking into visa options. This is where it get's really difficult as you need a job offer to apply for a work visa. The catch, most employers do not want to give an offer without a visa...catch 22.
In my next post my story on job searching and applying for jobs.👉
O yes, and the "small" process of selling our house, business and cars.
For immigration information
https://www.immigration.govt.nz/
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