Jan-Willem & Priya(36)

I'm Jan-Willem, a data engineer, and my wife Priya is a UX designer. We met during a master's program in Leiden. Priya holds an Indian passport and I a Dutch one. That combination made emigrating extra complex — we had to find a country that welcomed us both. New Zealand turned out to be the best option: my work visa as a data engineer on the Green List automatically gave Priya a Partner of a Worker Visa.

INZ's Green List includes ICT roles such as software engineer, data engineer and cybersecurity specialist. With my master's in data science and four years of experience, I qualified for a Straight to Residence pathway. My employer, an agtech startup in Tauranga doing data analysis for the kiwifruit industry, was an Accredited Employer and handled the process. Priya's Partner visa was tied to mine and gave her full work rights.

Tauranga is on the Bay of Plenty and is New Zealand's fastest growing city. The region is the center of the kiwifruit industry, but there's also a growing tech sector. The climate is subtropical — mild winters, warm summers, and Mount Maunganui has one of the best beaches in the country. Priya, who grew up in Hyderabad, felt at home here faster than in cold Netherlands.

For Priya the biggest challenge was getting her Indian qualifications recognized by NZQA. The Level 7 Bachelor equivalency took eight weeks and cost NZ$1,200. But once that was sorted, she found a job as a UX designer at a marketing agency in the Mount within two weeks. The New Zealand job market is smaller than the Dutch one, but competition is also less fierce, especially outside Auckland.

As a mixed couple we feel more accepted here than in the Netherlands. New Zealand is more multicultural than you'd think — Tauranga has large Indian, Chinese and Filipino communities alongside the Māori and Pākehā population. There's an Indian supermarket, a temple and Diwali is celebrated on a grand scale. Priya misses her family, but the community here feels like a second home.

Our advice to mixed couples: research the Partner of a Worker Visa thoroughly. It's one of the most generous partner visa schemes in the world — your partner gets full work rights and can seek employment independently. And consider Tauranga: it's more affordable than Auckland, the climate is better and the quality of life is fantastic. After two years we applied for our Permanent Residence and plan to start a family here.