Sunday, December 19, 2010

How To Move A Family of Five Across The Globe - Part 2

If you're interested in reading about stunning vistas and fantastic experiences, skip this post; this is meant for people planning a trip similar to ours. 

Once the job was confirmed, the next step was to begin the application process for my medical license.

One of the things I liked about working with Wavelength was that in a very streamlined process, once they had matched me to a hospital, the "recruitment" team handed things over to Elinor who handled the immigration stream. I liked that she would often call on a Sunday night just to chat and make sure that things were still going well on my end.

The process was not so different from Canada. Lots of forms to fill out, reference letters to arrange and diplomas to photocopy. The trickiest part was getting an English translation of my medical diploma from McGill that is in Latin. As it turns out, the McGill department of student services provides notarized translations for free! Bonus!

Once the application was complete and mailed off to Wellington, it took about 2 months to get the license which is probably comparable (or even a little faster) than the Royal College in Canada.

I had all our visa applications sitting in an envelope ready to be sent to the New Zealand High Commission in Ottawa. We applied for a work visa for me under the "work under special circumstances" or something like that, student visas for Harrison & Cassandra and a single visitor's visa application for my wife Trish and Mackenzie.

We had our passports back in about a month. There was some discussion about whether we'd have to pay for the kids' school, but with a work permit, primary school kids are granted "domestic student status". Our 4 year old, Mackenzie, who is attending pre-school here will keep my wife company in Palmerston North while I go to work and the two kids attend school.

With the immigration issues settled, it was time to find schools and a place to live.

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