Highly-skilled immigrant faces unemployment

5/02/2013 1:32:11 p.m.

kevin k wrote:

we are english been here going on 9 years and this one will be our last.. and im over 50 and finding it hard..my wife well i cant go into too much details..but she hasnt had the support she feels she should have from her bosses..so we are off new adventure to aussie..lost money here in investments had to take a business to court over them renaning on a job i was promised then they said we dont want you now..food electricity are so expencive here now..bye bye

5/02/2013 1:26:29 p.m.

kelvyn wrote:

I feel sorry for those immigrants who have had such bad experiences, but has anything changed? after all, Australia was originally colonised by convicts and New Zealand by 'remittance men', you know the younger sons who had an unfortunate penchant for wearing their sisters underwear. They got sent to the colonies. Maybe we don’t come from quite the honourable stock as we would like to think in this land downunder, perhaps we are actually a bunch of scoundrels and these unfortunate modern day immigrants were just the victims of a long running myth. As one has said in the comments "they were sold a pup".

5/02/2013 11:38:13 a.m.

John C wrote:

I'll add my voice to those who think they've been sold a pup by moving to NZ. I too am here because my skills are on the Long Term Skills Shortage List, I too have struggled to find work and have experienced unemployment here for the first time in my career. Reading the other comments I don't believe that the problems can be pointed at one side of the political fence or the other. The one thing that is certain, neither side of the political divide has the courage or strength to deal with some extremely unpalatable truths about why so many Kiwi's are skipping the ditch each month.

4/02/2013 11:36:56 a.m.

CAROLE wrote:

We have been here 5 years and well before that we back packed the country to see the sort of life and work was available. Then we decided to migrate which wasn't easy almost a year to get accept then a year to sell house at the beginning of a recession but we knew the facts but we had no plans just that the area we needed to be in to get any chance of a job. It took a further 2 years to stable our job security and we found one important thing out. It is not enough to have the qualifications but experience first NZ way and then to blend in with the cultures and the Kiwis. Once you are accepted then it makes no difference where you come from! The way of life offers so much freedom but forget about depending on a live able wage nothing can compare to what we were used to. This country needs to move forward and that means that not just the government but the people also. We knew this and why we came but certainly not for what it could give us but what we could give to them. Don't get me wrong we have a good standard of life and leisure but we did know what we were getting into most of the time and it wasn't easy. You have to become a Kiwi first after 4/5 years the standard time. Migration in the UK give you no idea of the work situation even about that summer and no work between Dec March is certainly not the best time to make the change over. The mistake we made! Not even UK are perfect which I did point out to them later. If you really want to make a go of it first do your homework come over and establish work field as you see it not from the agencies back pack plenty of that. Age does not come into it but make sure you have health on your side. Look at price differences of houses renting etc, food that is a start. Then maybe you will have a chance but don't expect to walk into a job it doesn't happen that way they don't trust you for a period of 2 years then slowly it gets better!

31/01/2013 7:47:06 p.m.

Lindsay Curnow wrote:

It is hard to believe that an intelligent person woul uproot his family & change country for job that waan't even permanent. I would have expected him to have checked this situation out thoroughly. If it is a specialised area then it should have been quite simple to find out that there are few jobs in his area of expertise.

31/01/2013 7:20:42 p.m.

disgruntled wrote:

Nursing in New Zealand is not what it is made out to be. Typically nurses that are here are understaffed, overworked and penal rates are regularly not paid(especially in private practice) Nurses are not supported when false accusations(people that bear false witness due to not getting their own way) are made against them. Nurses can be made to take their holidays at the suitability of the employer and the same people are regularly given school holiday times, especially when they have booked an overseas trip. Other staff who have children and want to spend time with them are denied holidays. In fact I got turned down for three years in a row stating they could not spare me. Try three years of no holidays. Management often has the professional standards of bickering housewives and minor disputes get regularly blown out of proportion. Not only are our nurses going overseas but they are leaving in droves due to stress caused through incompetent management.

31/01/2013 5:56:13 p.m.

Jinny wrote:

My heart goes out to this family as we had a similar experience regarding lack of support from the NZ Immigration Service who regularly change their goalposts and don't honour retrospective conditions which existed at the time of application, on which people base their decision to make the huge and expensive move from the other side of the globe.
If only the NZIS were as helpful,warm and welcoming as the website suggests, and honest about the real cost of living here,we would not have heard of so many stories where people felt truly shafted by the NZIS.
Fortunately,after some difficult and costly years we're now sorted and settled.
We are a retired couple who live in the beautiful Rangitikei district of the North Island and if ever this family wish to have a holiday in this region, or need short term accommodation if they decide to relocate to this area, they would be very welcome to stay with us at no cost.
Please pass on this information and our email address to them in case there is anything that we can do to help them.
We wish them good luck for the future wherever it may take them.

31/01/2013 2:52:55 p.m.

belanhud wrote:

We were sold the same line by immigration agencies, in the UK; 'come to New Zealand build a new life, New Zealand is crying out for skilled migrates, they need your skills. We have been here three and a half years. 230 job applications, no work and no future. We've lost all the saving we had, now we are shipping out. No wonder so many people are crossing the ditch, to try to build a better life for their families.

31/01/2013 12:46:52 p.m.

Dawn wrote:

My partner is a Kiwi born and raised and when we were thinking of where we would want to live part of the reason we decided to move here was based on the thought that the cost of living was lower than in the U.S. That the housing market was better that things would just be better, not to mention safer, here than in the U.S. It may be a safer place but i've found that all of the rest of it was very wrong. The cost of groceries alone is nearly double what we would pay in the U.S. clothing and books and other types of goods are also nearly double and in many causes the quality is poor. Like Mr. McGregor i've been here for two years and have applied for every job I am capable of doing and have not gotten so much as a nibble. This is a very hard place to live and if I knew then what I know now I would have made a very different decision three years ago.

31/01/2013 12:39:41 p.m.

Greg wrote:

Theres lots of work driving taxis for our highly educated and skilled migrants. Keep up the good work immigration. NZ has a isolated cabin fever complex, with a small narrow minded outlook, its a shame really.