this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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How does one move to New Zealand?
Asking for a friend.
Move to Australia.
Miss.
Usually NZ has less restrictive visa requirements, and is often called “Australia’s back door” due to Au/Nz free travel agreements.
We treat NZ like another state so this isn't all that far from the truth.
How did you know they were a "Miss"?
Because they found themselves in Australia, as opposed to New Zealand. They missed NZ by about 4k km.
So 4 megameters?
Or 0,4 gigameters
Can you convert that to quectometers, please?
And don't call me Shirley.
Surely you can’t be serious.
If you're serious then here you go
Take a look at the skills shortages list as well, because if you can get a job in something on that list, you'll have a much easier time. We desperately need Healthcare workers
You will be welcome here for the most part, but I have started noticing some things that are starting to annoy me, and I know I'm not alone, so fair warning:
Please remember why you're coming here. Nothing annoys me more than Americans who move here and then never shut up about how things were better back home. We have no 2a, our stores are small, and we don't tip. I consider those to be GOOD things. Also, even our right wing party (National) would be considered center left over there. (Sadly that seems to be changing)
If you're just looking for what America was 15 years ago, Australia is what you're looking for. That's not a joke either, I mean that very seriously, Australia is a better fit. It's the USA of the southern hemisphere (sorry Aussies, but tell me I'm wrong)
It's a process, but it can be done! Good luck!
Drive on the left with right-drive cars is a big one.
I wish I could tell you you're wrong, but... :(
And if Dutton gets elected this year it will get soooo much worse. Hey, New Zealand is a beautiful place! Maybe I'll move there too!
Small store, no tips, be quiet? Sounds like heaven.
Next you'll tell me that the government expects me to take time off from work to care for my health and family. And that having a personal car is expensive and unnecessary.
Although you may not recieve as warm a welcome in Aus at the moment.
A LOT of Australians are mad at Americans for their political culture right now. We have transphobes and bigots here too and theres a lot of Australian bigots who are feeling very bold. Also theres a feeling from the more left leaning people that if we dont have enough resources and room for people fleeing ethnic cleansing, wars and famine we dont have the room for people who didnt like how their democratic election went. Also our cost of living isnt going down either...
Not saying you will get a hostile reaction, or even a negative one... just temper your expectations.
It wasn’t a democratic election. The republicans succeeding in the 2000 coup is what got this ball rolling. They filled up the judiciary with compromised judges, bought out elections, used the tech bros to manipulate everyone. And structurally it’s not remotely a democracy, see the electoral college.
People fleeing have good reason to. I would if I could.
FYI there's a typo in here which had me reading it like "people-freeing ethnic cleansing", which sounds evil as hell and not at all what you meant
Thanks for that, fixed.
My take: Aussies are Americans with British humour.
...and really shitty Internet access.
Isn't American Internet also known to be pretty bad already? At least in many places?
A lot of America is empty so this highly depends on what you mean
In the city the internet is great
I grew up in the armpit of SW Oklahoma. My parents' Internet was 256 kbps in 2009. Today, they get a blazing 20 Mbps and it goes down all the time. My brother signed up for a satellite internet company that's a bit more reliable and gives him something like 50 Mbps, but iirc, his data cap is something like 250 GB and then it's overage charges. And I think he pays $120 a month for that plan.
My wife and I live in the Oklahona City area and get 250 Mbps, and only because that's all we need. We were running 500 for a while, but we almost never needed that much. We have a 1 TB data cap and pay $50 a month.
We're going to upgrade to fiber in the next few years. A local company is in our area and offers symmetrical 1 Gbps internet for like $80 a month. But there are upfront costs associated with getting it set up in the house that I don't want to swing yet. But I'm thinking more about it lately because I'd love to self host something like Nextcloud and get off of Google Drive.
Anyway, yeah, internet in cities is mostly pretty good. Once you're out in the sticks, well, good luck.
Oh my gosh, former Oklahomie for a while here! Can. Confirm.
I once lived in the Northeast by Tahlequah, and the options were dial-up, satellite (with that awful data cap and terrible pings), or a couple guys running an ISP that involved pointing a receiver at a radio tower but download speeds were restricted to like 40kbps.
For games I already had, SOME multiplayer was possible, and web browsing was mostly fine.
Example of DL speeds though: Metro 2033 said it would take like 3 or 4 solid days so my long distance GF (now wife!) literally just sent game files to me on a USB drive through the mail. LOL
Sadly they closed up shop, though.
But somehow, when I lived with my grandma who lived in a place called "Hennepin", they got blessed with DSL. Made zero sense but I didn't complain! Even though I had to put a second router in bridge/repeater mode so it'd reach me at the trailer I lived in like 20 yards away from the house! (Trailer didn't even have plumbing. Winter was "fun." LOL)
Absolutely wild how cut-off a lot of the country is.
The big stinky desert city I'm in now has its problems, and Cox charges out the nose, but at least we get unlimited fiber out of it.
Starlink might have been great for those folks if it wasn't headed by such stupid evil...
I bought The Sims 3 when it was new. My bedroom was already like a nautical mile from the access point so download speeds were gonna be crap anyway, but I had to run an extension cord into my closet and disable all power saving options so it could sit in the back of my closet for the better part of the week and download my game. I think it was probably 3½ days all in lmao
My old college buddy has HughesNet and says he hates them, but it's better than the alternative down there. Which, yeah, was a family-owned telephone company that did some dial-up on the side in the '90s and never saw a need to upgrade their equipment. The only reason it got better was because they sold out to an actual ISP. When I moved to Weatherford to finish my bachelor's degree in 2012, you were required to have landline service to get internet access. The parent company removed that requirement on Day 1, afaik.
I have physical copies of GTA IV and Skyrim on PC because it was soooooo much faster to install them from DVDs, but God help you if you need to download updates. Back then, a 300 MB download was a commitment.
Cox also rules Oklahoma County and its neighbors, but like I said, we have OEC fiber in our neighborhood. I appreciate them being local. When we bought our house, we had a little cash left over from the sale of our old condo. We thought about going with OEC right after move-in, but it was going to be $800 worth of work and they had us scheduled a month out. We needed internet immediately because it was mid-pandemic and neither me nor my wife had anywhere to go to work for a month. The mortgage don't pay itself lol
I kinda regret having to stick with Cox. I'm squirreling away some cash here and there so maybe we'll finally jump ship this summer.
If I could do it again, I'd probably stay in Oklahoma because my wife is an amazing person. She moved here from Mississippi. It frequently sucks being a couple of blue dots here. If I had it my way, we'd sell all but the essentials, load my Hondas on a trailer, and pull them with my wife's truck all the way to the PNW today. But all her family just moved up here a few years ago and she hasn't been able to see her parents regularly since 2013. Her sister has kids and she doesn't want to be unable to be involved in their lives. Can't fault her for that.
I'd steal those kids and run off to the PNW anyway where they'll actually get an education, but the cops say that's kind of illegal or something lol idk ianal jk jk or am i
Good on ya for escaping this place. Maybe one day I will too.
Oh, and my great-grandmother, born in 1923, had dial-up as late as 2017. I still cannot believe anyone was still offering it that late in the game, but there she was lol She had email. She got her first email address when she was in her late 70s, but she never learned to type. What a legend that woman was lmao
It really depends. I know of little towns in rural Idaho that have gigabit fibre to the house simply because the local phone company submitted the request for a federal grant. The money has been there since Obama, but utils need to ask for it, and certain local populations would rather starve than take any sort of handout from the federal government.
Wife and I looked into moving to Australia after we visited Sydney. I work in IT so not a problem for me to find a new job and my wife is in healthcare. She is a respiratory therapist which is in high demand but looks like your end of the world does nursing with a speciality in respiratory therapy.
Couldn’t figure out how that would translate but damn are we ready to jump over the bigger pond.
How about engineers in NZ?
I guess it depends on the kind of engineering you're talking about, but for the most part, yes. Tier 1 straight to residency
So residency immediately with a job offer? Woah
Engineer ? Believe it or not, straight to ~~jail~~ residency
You're right. Have always considered Australia the US and NZ Canada.
Americans fit in well in Australia so long as they're friendly and check their ego at the door. Australian culture is a big moosh of many cultures but tends to cringe at American culture. You kind of have to be more about yourself rather than be all about being an American, then you will fit in.
Possibly stupid question but what do you mean by "we have no 2a"?
Edit: 2nd amendment, thanks!
2nd amendment AKA bubba with a larger arsenal than an army arms room.
You're wrong
An excellent point, and well made. But have you considered this?
I mean, you asked us to tell you that you're wrong
I generally don't agree that we're culturally much like the US, but between AUKUS and Pine Gap, we're definitely beholden to them
Step one have money.
I moved to NZ with a backpack and 2000 dollars in my name. Seven years now, I have been permanent resident for a while