The neverendum continues.

[zotz]

So how does someone with no apparently marketable skills go about emigrating?

Comments

[deliberateblank]

Have enormous pecs. They'll even make you governor.

[zotz]

Actually a better answer than any I'd thought of. Another friend suggested being an au pair.

[hirez]

Bob only knows.

A long time ago, being in the early days of a (better) Ken MacLeod book sounded like it might be fun. Now? We don't have the IT to support microstates. (And the IT we do have seems to be in thrall to the modern iteration of the Illinois Nazi Party.)

In short, arse.

[shermarama]

If you could pull off classifying yourself as a Medical Laboratory Scientist Including Cytoscientist, you'd be on the Long Term Skills Shortage list for New Zealand. A doctorate-level education plus sufficient professionally-relevant work experience plus some more work experience in general will get you past the automatic selection threshold for a Permanent Resident visa... Which you probably didn't actually wish to know, but since you asked, like.

[zotz]

Annoyingly, that sort of thing's exactly in my line, but as apparently the genome/ten-papers-in-Nature thing isn't enough to get me a biology job here, I suspect it won't be enough to persuade someone to do the work permit application either.

[shermarama]

For that particular visa, if you score enough points, you can just get the visa as a self-standing individual, with no need for a job offer or any companies involved or anything. (I very very nearly had enough points to do this myself, only they weren't sure I had enough years of professional-level employment.) And then a permanent resident visa is the next best thing to citizenship, where you just have the right to live here indefinitely, can do any job you like or not and so forth. I mean, there's probably lots of reasons not to do this but that's not one, is all.

[zotz]

The reason not to is that I don't have any recent experience. If someone would give me the sort of job I used to have for a couple of years then I might be able to reach somebody's points target.

It was actually a rhetorical question - I really don't qualify these days.

[grendelis]

Back when I did it you had to be under 40yo I think. He could also marry someone I guess, but that's rather radical.

[zotz]

Age probably varies. There might be somewhere. Otherwise, head over for a few weeks and hang around the bars looking hopeful? Again, a long shot but at least as plausible as anything I'd already thought of.

[shermarama]

The hard limit is 55 (or it was when I was doing this last year) although you get fewer points if you pass thresholds at 40, 45 and 50. When I worked that out I did a major rush job to get the application on their desk before my 40th birthday, and managed it by two days...

[inulro]

Don't ask me, I have a built-in emigration option. Two, if you count the eligibility for Irish passport in the family.

[zotz]

My granddad could have had an Irish passport if he'd wanted one, and then I could, but he'd probably have thought it was bourgeois and nationalist.

[hfnuala]

Was he born on the island of Ireland? If he was it doesn't matter than he never got one, you're still entitled.

[zotz]

North Wales or the Wirral, I think. I don't know if he ever even visited Ireland.