Hey all, I hope I’m posting to the right place. My gf and I are both trans women considering immigrating to New Zealand from the US. We both have green list careers so we’re not too worried about eligibility but we are wondering if we would be welcome/fit in in NZ.
Everything I’ve seen or heard in media makes NZ look about 1000 times better than the US. Every country has their problems but from my limited viewpoint NZ looks pretty great. We’d appreciate any advice or perspective you’d care to share. Thanks in advance.
There is lots of racism in NZ but it’s mostly targeted at Maori, Chinese, and Indians (both Fijian and from India). If you are not one of those groups you should be mostly OK. I haven’t seen too much hostility towards trans people so you should also be OK in that regard.
Be aware though, this is not an easy place to live. It’s expensive as hell here and you’ll be shocked at how much you are paying for food, utilities, rent and every day goods like clothes and electronics.
I have talked to countless expats and the number one thing they complain about is how impossible it is to make friends here. Kiwis are polite enough and nice enough for superficial interactions but they won’t let you in their inner circles and become friends. Most expats are friends with other expats although not necessarily from the same country. Since you are in a marginal community I think this will be less of a problem for you. I presume the LGBTQ community will be more willing to embrace expats.
Having said all that I still think this is a great place to live. Just go into it with open eyes. Prepare well, bring in a shit ton of money and all your goods. You will regret not bringing something when you try to replace it and it costs triple what you paid for it.
Comments like this are why the open internet rules.
How bad is the racism against Chinese people specifically? My GF is Chinese.
It’s no worse than anywhere else to be honest and mostly limited to older people.
My partner is kiwi Chinese, 3rd gen NZ, but full blood.
She experiences a fair amount of casual racism. But it is pretty low key, very uncommon to have anything overt.
Individually, most people are nice.
I think we also have to have something to compare against. I know people talk a lot about NZ’s casual racism problem. It would be good to have input from someone who moved from the US to here to see some sort of comparison.
Perhaps the working holiday idea that someone else had would be a good plan. You could come for a year or two depending on what visa you can get, then you get a good chance to see what it is like to live here, and also the Trump presidency will be half over.
If you are white or close you’re probably fine. Racism is alive and well in MZ and Oz. Especially outside big cities
This is a pretty hard one to answer. I’m not convinced there are many places in the world you can be openly non-cis and not ever feel like you’re not welcome. Our latest election also swung our government pretty hard to the right, because we are not immune from the same things that affect the US and other countries. Luckily a proportional government means single parties almost never get over 50% of the vote so they are forced to make agreements with other parties and so extremist policies end up watered down.
It’s also worth noting that NZ (the government and others) spend a lot of money on presenting a certain image of NZ to the world. You will find many people complaining about life in NZ, though you’ll find much less complaining from people who have lived elsewhere.
With that said, I feel NZ is pretty trans friendly overall. For example, for NZ passports we let people select the sex they want, even if different from other documents, simply by signing a form (the term “sex” is used because of international passport requirements).
I would aim for a big city (by NZ standards), I know Wellington is pretty friendly to non-cis, in part because the government is based there and there are a significant number of government employees working at agencies with diversity policies (you might see this phrased as “bring your whole self to work”).
I think you can say overall NZ is similar to other “western” nations (e.g. the UK or Australia), but with lower salaries, higher cost of living, and a better work life balance (for many but not all).
How bad at the rural areas? We want to live in a larger city anyways but we both lobe hiking and camping so would like to be able to at least visit the countryside.
Could you expound on work life balance? What kind of vacation time is considered average? Here we get 2-3 weeks a year.
If you’re living in a rural area, they tend to be very blue (national) for financial policy reasons, but from what I’ve seen are reasonably accepting of different sexualities etc.
As far as tourist areas are concerned, I don’t think they will be significantly different from urban areas, there’s not really a link between political views and being into the outdoors.
Oh I don’t want to give the wrong idea, it’s not like stories I’ve heard of the US. You’re very unlikely to get attacked for not being cis or straight in rural areas, just more like comments or stares. Maybe someone else can chime in though as I’m a cis straight white male so often these kinds of things are hidden from me.
Flexible working hours are common, many places are doing work from home for a portion of your time but the new government has come down hard on this recently for public service (which is a lot of Wellington workers). You can ask to have it in your contract though, and many places still will.
Legally annual leave is 4 weeks plus 11 public holidays (special rules if you need to work on those days, most office jobs will just shut for the day). Then you also get 10 sick days on top of this.
That all sounds a lot better than it is here, we’ve both experienced verbal harassment and I was attacked a couple years ago. I think I’d also feel more comfortable since yall have actual gun control laws, I grew up rural and have been around guns my whole life, but it is absolutly insane how prevalent they are here.
The work life balances sounds a lot better than what we have. We don’t have any minimum time off laws at all, and the current government wants to get rid of overtime pay and union protections.
Was just thinking, I’ve said flexible working hours are common, but this is going to be quite industry specific. Most of my recent experience is in public service which tends to be more flexible, but it’s not uncommon in other large organisations for non-customer facing office roles (i.e. those that don’t have specific customer hours).
Also, some of our government wants to remove union protections as well. The big difference is that our current government is made up of a coalition of centre-right party, a further right party, and a populist party. To pass laws, they all have to agree. So there’s a lot of talk, but in general changes are limited to rolling back some recent worker rights policies from the previous government, they can’t get enough agreement to pass sweeping changes. There is no such thing as president’s orders here, no one person can make a new law (apparently this is true in the US too but I don’t really understand what all the orders were Trump was signing).
That sounds a lot more sane than our politics, out policies change rapidly whenever the parties switch who’s in charge. The whole presidential executive orders thing is really wild, they can’t pass full laws but the power they do weild is immense. The 00s invasion of Iraq was done on an executive order, and no Trump is using them to take away lgbt rights and deport a ton of immigrants. The president is supposed to be reigned in by congress and the judicial branch but they’re both strongly aligned with same party and do little to check his power.
Here we get 2-3 weeks a year
Legal minimum is 4 weeks paid leave, which accrues (ie, if you don’t use it, you keep it for next year) and 2 weeks sick leave (which doesn’t accrue)
Don’t forget to add the public holidays as well, i’ve found lots of folks overseas are surprised we get so many on top of our 4 weeks.
I think at last count there’s another 11 public holidays that you will also get, as well as the 4 weeks/20 days annual leave.
The employer can require you to work on the public holidays, but you will get paid 1.5x and a day in lieu (ie you take the public holiday at another date). Employers can also have a mandatory annual close-down, which is very common in bigger companies and organisations, will usually happen over Christmas & New Years and at that point they can require you to use up some of your 4 weeks.
I guess the other thing about leave which might be different in NZ compared to elsewhere is that especially if you have a bigger employer they’ll actively push you to take leave - pretty commonly they aim for you to have no more than 10 days annual leave owing, or at least plans to reduce it to get to that cap. That can be awkward but its also good that you get to take your leave!
they’ll actively push you to take leave
This is the part that I think is kinda genius (although I doubt it was totally intentional) - by making leave accrue and requiring businesses to pay out the value when employees leave, you put a clear dollar value on doing the right thing. You align the employer and the employees interests, so even if a company can’t ensure people take leave because it’s the right thing to do, they can usually manage it because it’s good business
Agree with this, I think the point about living in a big city is important, and particularly Wellington is known to be more non-cis friendly compare with other cities.
There are bigots and assholes the same as anywhere else, but you are not likely to see the sort of systematic discrimination like you would in the US. Protection from discrimination by employers or landlords is law, and not especially controversial.
The major issues we have as a country are pretty similar to the rest of the world; our government is a coalition of 3 “conservative” parties which have been trying to undo as much of the social safety net as possible in the name of “efficiency” and “lower taxes” (which only really works if you are wealthy enough to not need the safety net in the first place); the health and education systems are chronically underfunded; and the real estate market is set up for speculators, not people who want a place to live; and the cost of living in general has been increasing dramatically in the past few years.
Standard advice for anyone considering moving; come for a working holiday for a few months before committing to moving here permanently. I love this country, but you are probably going to be in for a bit of a culture shock coming from the US
That sounds similar to things here in the US, especially housing and costs of living, though I expect those to be exacerbated by NZ being an island.
I’ve been trying to get an idea of NZ politics and have noticed the rightward shift, but it seems that overall the political climate is a fair bit more leftward. Also proportional government sounds like a dream compared to the shit show we have over here.
NZ being an island definitely makes a lot of stuff expensive, but housing is a whole other kettle of fish. We have no capital gains taxes*, and due to high immigration and very low interest rates housing has been seen as a can’t lose investment because you buy, hold for 3-4 years and in the best periods of the boom would double your money. That basically triggered a bit of a doom spiral where because people need houses they had to buy at highly inflated prices triggered by those buying them for investments.
*Sort of, there are some exceptions where they apply, but mostly no.
Have you checked that they’ll have you? Iirc, they’re fairly strict about immigration.
Yes, my gf is a healthcare practitioner and I’m an engineer. Both of our careers are on the immigration green list, which gives us a permanamt resident visa.
It sounds like you would qualify for residency easy enough. You can start the process now, it takes a long time and there is a lot of paperwork to go through. I wouldn’t bother with a so called consultant. Just do the calculations on the web site and if you have enough points you should be OK.
Here is a suggestion for you.
See if you can get a work visa first. In your fields you should be able to get offers and once that’s done you can get a work visa for two years. During those two years you can file for residency here if you like it.
As a US citizen you can have dual citizenship and can always go back if it doesn’t work out.
Healthcare work here is tough, long hours, very low pay compared to the USA and Europe or Australia.
Finally.
Have you considered Australia? More money, more opportunities, friendlier people (but still pretty damned racist towards aboriginals, asians, indians etc).
We’ve started the process for getting our work related papers in order, her medical license has been accepted and my engineering degree and certs are in process. Our current plan is to use the 90 day tourist visas we have to do more in person job searches and then get a work visa. Our leaving the states hinges on how bad things get here. She shares child custody with her ex so we really don’t want to leave the kids if we don’t have to.
We have thought about a couple other countries but NZ is currently our first choice. Australia does appear to have more opportunity as far as work and housing go, but they also feel closer to the US politically which worries us.
Australia is going to have an election this year. Hopefully Labour can hold on and keep it left of centre which is far cry better than the US.
Australia is a lot more like NZ than the US, and crucially compared to NZ their unions didn’t get smashed like ours did so still hold a lot of sway. This is the main reason why their work conditions are often a lot better, as is their pay. Culturally they’re pretty similar but maybe a bit more open and friendly than Kiwis, we can be a bit quiet & insular but weirdly moreso to people we see regularly than a random tourist stopping and saying hello. We are also super clique-y and it can be hard (even as a kiwi) to make friends if you’re new to a city etc.
