You can apply for residence if you have had a Religious Worker Work Visa for 3 years. You must have an offer of continuing work and sponsorship from your religious organisation.
Indefinitely
55 years and under
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Check if you are eligible to apply for this visa and what supporting documents and information you need to provide.
You must provide proof of your identity
Also provide a copy of your Identity card.
You must be in good health
You must have a chest x-ray and a medical examination as proof of your good health.
You must be of good character
If you, or anyone else included in your application, are aged 17 or older you must provide a police certificate from:
Police certificates must be less than 6 months old at the time you apply.
If you provide a police certificate that is not in English, you must provide an English translation.
This includes police certificates that record no convictions.
You must have held a Religious Worker Work Visa for at least 3 years
We’ll check our records and your passport for evidence:
To be eligible for residence, you must’ve met the conditions of your Religious Worker Work Visa.
You must have an acceptable sponsor
You must be sponsored by a religious organisation:
As evidence of your sponsorship, you must provide:
You can’t be an ‘officer’ or a ‘nominated person’ of your sponsoring organisation.
You must have an offer of ongoing religious work from your sponsor
The work you’ve been offered must be in substantially one or more of the following religious activities:
If the work you’ve been offered is paid salary or wages, you must provide a copy of an employment agreement.
If the work you’ve been offered is paid by any means other than salary or wages or is unpaid, then you must provide a description of that work.
We don’t consider religious study to be religious work when we assess resident visa applications.
You must be 55 or under
We check your identity documents — for example, your passport — to confirm your age.
You must speak and understand English
Evidence can include proof you:
English language test results must be no more than 2 years old.
If your partner and dependent children 16 and over do not speak English, they can learn in New Zealand. You will have to pay us for English language classes before we can grant you a visa.
Learning English in New Zealand after you come to New Zealand
You must have at least 5 years’ religious training and/or work experience
Evidence may include:
You must not have received any welfare benefits or assistance
If you or anyone included in your residence application, have received any welfare benefits or assistance since you were granted a Religious Worker Work Visa, you won’t be eligible to apply for residence.
When you complete your residence application, we’ll ask for your authority to contact Work and Income to check if you’ve received any welfare benefits or assistance.
Work and Income
To apply for residence, you must be in New Zealand
We’ll check our records to confirm your location.
Your family must meet the requirements for a resident visa
To include your partner and dependent children in your residence application, you must provide evidence:
Partnership
Dependent children
English language test results for residence from work
You and your partner must have been living together in a genuine and stable relationship for 12 months or more
You must provide evidence that you and your partner are living together in a genuine and stable relationship.
Your evidence should show:
Your children must be single and 24 or under
For us to consider your children dependent, they must be single and either:
We’ll ask you to sign a declaration that your children are single when you complete your residence application.
We’ll use the documents you provide as proof of your children’s identity to confirm their age.
Children living with a partner are not considered to be single, even if they’ve been living with their partner for less than a year.
Children aged 21-24 are only considered dependent if they rely on an adult for financial support.
Children aged 21-24 must rely on an adult for financial support
When we assess if your children need financial support, we’ll look at whether they:
We may ask for evidence that your children are financially dependent.
Children aged 21-24 are only considered dependent if they rely on an adult for financial support.
You must be the parent or legal guardian of your dependent children
You must provide evidence that confirms your relationship to your children, which may include:
If you’re a New Zealand resident and your dependent children were eligible to be included in your residence application, but weren’t included, we may ask you to explain the reason for this.
If your children joined your family through customary adoption, we may seek confirmation of the adoption from the children’s biological parents.
You can provide household registration documents if these confirm your relationship to your child.
You must have the legal right to remove dependent children from their home country
If you’re separated or divorced, you must provide legal documents that show that one of the following applies:
If your children’s other parent has died, you must provide their death certificate.
If you have a statutory right to the custody of your children and it’s not possible to get legal documents to confirm this right, we will assess your right to remove the children on a case-by-case basis.
The information below will help you understand the process, timeframes and costs involved in applying for this visa, so you can plan ahead and have the best chance of submitting a complete application.
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Enter country detailsThese are the conditions that you must meet once you have your visa.
You must have an acceptable sponsor for a period of 5 years from your first day as a resident in New Zealand.
You must be sponsored by a religious organisation that’s:
You can travel in and out of New Zealand as often as you like for a period of 5 years from your first day as a resident in New Zealand, which is when your travel conditions expire.
To travel after that, you will need to apply for and be granted either:
For information about applying for a permanent resident visa or a variation of travel conditions, read:
Guide for Resident or Former Resident Visa Holders (INZ 1176)
Application from a Resident or Former Resident Visa Holder (INZ 1175)
If you’re outside of New Zealand when your travel conditions expire, your visa will expire as well.
If you want to travel, your visa must be in a valid passport.
If your passport expires, you must apply to transfer your visa to a new passport before you can travel.
To transfer your visa, you must:
Application for transfer or confirmation of a visa
Application for Transfer or Confirmation of a Visa (INZ 1023) PDF 381KB
For 5 years from your first day as a resident in New Zealand, you can only do the specific religious work, for the specific sponsoring religious organisation, in the specific location detailed in the employment agreement and/or job description that was the basis for us to grant your resident visa.
After that, you can work in any employment for any employer.
You can apply for a variation of conditions to allow you to do religious work for another religious organisation, if:
You can study in New Zealand.