The Waiting Game

Now that we've been selected by the NZ Gov't as potentital candidates for the skill migrant process, the next step is the long wait. In order for our application to move forward, it needs to be assigned to an immigration officer. For reasons unclear to us, we've been assigned to the London (UK) branch of Immigration NZ. From reading online (resources at the end of this post) for people selected, but without a job offer in NZ, this wait can be anywhere between 3 and 6 months. What's not entirely clear is how much longer it will be once we get an officer.
The role the officer has is to go over our application, make sure we provide all the proper proofs and paperwork, make sure our assumptions on the application process were valid (e.g. were speeding tickets to be documented as a criminal offence?) and then see what our updated score will be.
In our particular case, this may end up giving us MORE points rather then fewer (though we're already overqualified) because Carly will have her Teacher's Certificate by that point.
Interestingly enough, one of the stumbling blocks a lot of people seem to be hitting is the Medical Certificate. A lot of the rejections I've read about lately are people who don't qualify because their BMI is too high. NZ seems to want immigrants with a BMI of <40. To put this in perspective, a BMI of 40 on a 5'10" person means they weigh 279lb. for me, a BMI of 40 would be 295lb. Yikes.

resources I've found useful so far:

• http://www.move2nz.com/ (specifically the forums)
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Expats-in-New-Zealand/ (great crowd, anoying interface)
  
• http://immigration.govt.nz (obvious, but all the information is there and it's a fairly well designed website)

I'll post up some blogs of other NZ immigrants at some point once I sort through the ones I really like.