Can drinking beer in NZ get you Residency?

I was out having a drink at Hoppers in Ponsonby the other night with and old friend, and we end up chatting to a random couple who had seen me on one of the apartment ads we have in the office at work.

Good to know people are still looking at buying I thought..

After a bit of small talk he asks a question I've heard a lot over the years.

"So what DOES an American have to do to live here and get residency?"

I'd have thought Google would be all over that, so afterwards I did just that, and sure enough, the answers seem fairly obvious. Visas. Points. Residency pathways. Investment categories. Entrepreneur visas. Immigration advisers. Forms. Processes. All the things

Straightforward right?

But then I thought about it a bit more.

I don't think that's what he was asking.

Technically speaking, I suspect he or his wife could have handled the paperwork side of things just fine. It wasn't about an Investor or an Entrepreneur Visa. He probably could have sorted most of that with his Amex card and a couple of phone calls.

I think what he was really asking was:

"What do I actually have to do to move here?"

Not the technical stuff but the personal stuff, things like, do they have kids, cats or dogs and who knows what else they are attached to back home?

What does it take to decide you're going to leave behind the place you've always known and start again somewhere else?

Us Kiwis are surprisingly casual about it. Well when we were younger anyway.

We pack a bag, head to London, Australia, Canada or the States and figure it out as we go.

Sometimes we come home.

Sometimes we get caught by immigration.

Sometimes we run out of money.

Sometimes we meet someone, get married and simply stay.

Moving to Aussie is almost our national sport at the moment!

But what about Americans?

For them it's different, doing an OE isn't the same for them - a summer in Paris maybe if you fancy yourself as an artist who needs some street cred - but for years, or a total move? Well that's not part of their national psyche like it is ours.

Is it really a different culture, or do kiwis just adapt easier as we have been on the end of American and British TV for so long maybe. Do we know who they are through TV films and media, and would that translate the other way, is NZ just where Lord of the Rings met the Piano - or is heading out west in search of some Outrageous Fortune more us?

A smaller country we might be, (smaller than Texas or California) - but twice the size of Florida and with a lots less Alligators or Hurricanes.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised he'd caught me off guard.

I've spent so many years working with locals here who know what they want in a apartment or investment development that my brain immediately went to the practical stuff.

But I don't think that's where he or his wife were at, they were in holiday mode and were trying to see themselves here in a years time, not wondering about residency, but - who would they be at that point.

I wish I'd asked a few more questions.

What were the roadblocks or doubts, who did they want to be - I've moved oversees enough times myself and its a question to be dealt with for sure!

So here they were, having a yarn over a drink with some locals that they'd never meet before, did they even know they were halfway here.

Maybe the questions were more personal.

• How do I fit in here?

• Who would I be here?

• Would I make friends?

• Would I miss home?

• Could I build a life here?

• Why are the post boxes red?

Those are questions you shouldn't be Googling people!

The residency process itself is easy enough to find. I could name a handful of excellent immigration advisers who could walk someone through that blindfolded.

Sometimes there is a question that we don't know how to ask even ourselves.

So Andrew and Michelle from Fresno, if by some chance you stumble across this, sing out, maybe there's another chat to be had about all this, lets make it at the Gypsy Tea Room though before it vanishes.

Red and grey maybe