Visas, visas, visas. The thorn in the side of so many expats. Itās tough to live with it, but you certainly canāt live abroad without it. There are many pathways to securing your visa, which I wonāt be getting into in this newsletter, though I have touched on your options here.
What I will be touching on is the one that I submitted as of last week: a partnership visa. And because itās fresh on my mind, I thought Iād share how Iāve navigated the bureaucracy of the application ļ¼ without totally resenting the process.
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They allow foreign nationals to live with a spouse or long-term partner who is a citizen or resident. However, whatās different is how each country defines ālong-term partnerā and the lengths/ documentation to which you have to prove youāre in a committed and genuine relationship. It can range from tedious to weirdly invasive real quick! Iāve heard stories of people submitting screenshots of their sexy messages to their partners as proof. I wonder if āreading rl š½ā is a part of immigration agentsā job description. š¶
For those who are blissfully unaware of this process (I envy you), let me paint a quick picture of the documents Iāve had to submit for mine:
Digital photo album of our entire relationship in chronological order, with dates and captions.
A letter that details our relationship and how much we love each other
5 statements from friends/relatives testifying that our relationship is the real deal.
Joint bills and bank statements over the last year
Copy of our tenancy agreement
Screenshot of our chats and call logs
And this is just to PROVE my relationship, this doesnāt include the medical tests and police report I had to submit to verify I am a healthy, law-abiding citizen.
Oh, and letās not forget the cost! The visa + agent fees cost just under NZD 4k, which definitely leaves our pockets feeling significantly lighter.
Immigration when itās time to file for your visa.
But I digressā¦ this newsletter is about how to not feel resentful of this process.
Itās easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of documentation you have to provide, and, if youāre in a time crunch like I was, having that extra stress can really make the entire process insufferable and painful.
If thatās you right now, I see you girl!! š«
But if thereās any way I can make this process less painful for you, I would like to offer the following tips:
Create your own Gmail account - This is a real game-changer. I made a joint Gmail account with both mine and my partnerās name on it. The new Gmail account was our central, clean, and dedicated landing page to store our files. The lack of digital clutter or other distractions enabled me to take on the process with a clear and organised mind.
Create a Notion board to keep track of your to-do list - I love using Notion because I can create custom views to project manage the entire process. What I did was create a checklist and calendar view to keep track of all the tasks I need to do and documents I needed to collect. Then I broke it down week-by-week to focus on what I can get done every weekend, so I can slowly chip away at it rather than go panic-mode and try to do it all at once. Plus, the calendar view lets me visually see my timeline so I can keep within schedule. Pro tip: Give yourself a deadline for submitting your documents. I think a month is a fair amount of time from start to completion. If you let it drag on, itāll just become a huge mental and emotional load that youāll continue to carry around. Like a bandaid, you just need to give it one quick rip!
Aerial view of my notion board; pretty simple layout, just a calendar view and checklist
I broke down the big checklist into chunks I could complete each week.
Make it a date! - My partner and I would spend our Sunday mornings chipping away at our application with an iced coffee and breakfast bagel at our fave coffee shop. Bureaucracy aside, working on this with my partner gave us a reason to reminisce on how far weāve come. For the last few weekends, we created this coffee shop ritual, and it started to become something I looked forward to.
Asking for statements suck, butā¦ āThank youā gifts are sweet šŖš¦ One of the cringiest parts of the process is asking your family and friends to write statements about your relationship. Weāre very lucky to have so much love and support around us, so receiving heartfelt and genuine statements about our relationship was actually quite easy. But, keeping in mind these people had to take their time to write this up, we made sure they knew how grateful we are. We made gift bags with tea and freshly-baked cookies, gifted a wine bottle, and for our overseas friend, sent an e-gift card to Messina, the best gelato spot in Aus (IYKYK).
At the end of the day, if you can see this as an opportunity to reflect and celebrate your relationship, then it makes the bureaucracy of the process less weird and invasive. Youāre literally creating a love letter to your relationship, a timeline with receipts of how youāve intertwined your lives together.
Personally, my relationship with my partner started via FaceTime calls as we built ours through long distance, so the fact that we have a lease with our names on it is a huge blessing, which this process, despite the tedium, did help remind me of how far weāve actually come.
Lastly, once itās submitted, go out! Tell your expat friends! Grab a drink! Touch grass!
As my expat girlfriend, Cristal, reminded me, āYou must celebrate the wins along the way.ā And I think thatās the key to not becoming resentful of this process. Acknowledge what youāre doing is brave, that you can do this, be grateful that youāre in a position to even apply for this ļ¼ because this visa isnāt the thing standing between you and your dream life abroad, it is your ticket to keeping that very dream alive.
Having a raspberry yuzu with Marty at Sawmill Brewery in Matakana, the day we submitted our application!
While going through this visa process, I decided to bring my expat girlfriends together for brunch. I needed a space to vent and talk about what I was going through with women who understood. I put a date on our calendars and thought, āOh well, whoever comes will come.ā
9 of us showed up. What I didnāt expect was sitting at the cafe for nearly 4 hours, each of us taking turns talking about our own abroad experienceā¦ what brought us here, what hardships weāve had to overcome, what our dreams are, what projects we're working on.
The energy was magical. Truly. There was a level of vulnerability and sisterhood that came from sharing our stories and supporting one another from such an honest place. I needed it, and from the feedback I received, the other girls did too.
So I decided to create a community for other expat women in Auckland to feel held, seen, and celebrated in their experience abroad. Itās been something Iāve been wanting to do ever since I started writing this Substack, because while having an online community is great, I donāt think itāll ever beat creating those real-life relationships.
So, if youāre a broad abroad living in Auckland (AKA an āAuckland Expat Girlieā), come join our waitlist so you can be notified of our next events, or follow our insta @AKL.Expat.Girlies.
