Well obviously a lot has happened over the past year since I last posted. Without Covid we probably would have been happy to keep our Permanent Resident status, at least for a while, since citizenship doesn’t do a whole lot more for you than permanent residency (though it does open up some opportunities for Hop, so we likely would have gone the citizenship route at some point). But given all of the uncertainty that the pandemic has created, and especially the border restrictions that New Zealand has imposed (some of which affected permanent residents), we decided that as soon as we were eligible, we would apply for citizenship.
The main requirement is around presence in the country. The requirement is that you must have lived in the country for five years, which for us would be August 2021. However, the requirement isn’t exactly five years – for the last year, you have to have spent at least 240 days of the year in the country, which for us happened back in April.
So in May we filled out the forms to apply for citizenship. The process is super easy – you fill out a form online, submit some pictures and scans of your current passport, and do an online photo identification-verification thingy, verify you have good character, and pay up.
The processing queue is quite long at the moment, so some time next NZ autumn we hope to hear we’ve been allocated a case officer and then approved for citizenship. Then we’ll be scheduled for a ceremony to take the oath and be full fledged Kiwis.
Kiwi Bound 