New Zealand Citizenship
Once you’re settled into New Zealand you may decide you’d like to become a Citizen. As well as demonstrating your commitment to your new country, Citizenship gives you a range of benefits.
They include the right to travel freely overseas and return on a New Zealand passport, full access to economic rights, and full access to educational scholarships and awards that are reserved for New Zealanders.
Routes to citizenship
There are two main routes - Citizenship by Descent and Citizenship by Grant. Both are administrated by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA).
You may qualify for Citizenship by Descent if you were born overseas but one of your parents was a New Zealand citizen.
But generally, Citizenship by Grant is the way for most migrants. It may pay to note the requirements for children under 16 are slightly different.
New Zealand offers all sorts of options for choosing a home and lifestyle for your family.
Citizenship by Grant
In general terms, the requirements are:
- Intention: you must plan to stay living in New Zealand if you’re granted citizenship.
- Residence: you’ll usually be required to have been living in New Zealand with residence status for five years before you apply. (The option to apply after three years’ residence is no longer available).
- English: you must know English well enough to handle everyday situations like shopping or banking without assistance.
- Good character: if you’ve been convicted of traffic offences, benefit fraud or have any convictions, it may affect your application.
- You need to understand the responsibilities and privileges of New Zealand citizenship.
The Department of Internal Affairs has recently launched an online service for people wishing to apply for Citizenship by Grant. This is currently open to individual adults (groups, children, and families will be later).
To see whether you’re likely to meet the requirements for New Zealand citizenship and to check whether you can apply online, visit the Govt.nz website.
With all this in mind, our best recommendation is, if you have to contact an immigration lawyer, do it as early as you can. Of course, there are matters and topics that you can take care of your own if you so wish. For example, if you need a work permit to come and work in New Zealand, you can probably do that on your own. This will definitely save you some money in terms of immigration lawyer costs. However, if you choose to go it alone, make sure that you are doing your due diligence when it comes to research before submitting any official documentation or application forms. New Zealand, being an NZ member state provides the majority of the government service details on websites like INIS. The Department of Justice & Equality can be contacted through the details provided on their contact page. If you cannot find the information that you are looking for, a proper idea would be never to assume anything and contact the department right away via email or by phone for clarification.
Where possible, our best advice to you would be to always consult with a reputable immigration lawyer in Auckland. This way you can proceed with confidence knowing that you are engaging with a fully competent Auckland immigration lawyer who has the experience to deal with your issue having undoubtedly dealt with many other clients in a similar situation to your own.
