Just last week German woman Iris Tigges was hoping for a job promotion and looking forward to her second year of studying business management with the New Zealand Open Polytechnic.
Then last Friday, Immigration New Zealand contacted the Ngunguru resident and told her she had 10 days to leave New Zealand.
Yesterday, Ms Tigges flew out of the country she has lived in for more than three years to return reluctantly to Germany.
She said she was distraught at having to leave Ngunguru and that her short notice marching orders came as a shock because she had believed a residency application was likely to be approved.
However, Immigration NZ told her she did not have any internationally recognised qualification, therefore was of no potential employment value.
Ms Tigges said she had expected the business diploma would have met that criteria had she been allowed to stay and finish it.
She does not qualify for a student visa and has already had a 12-month working visa renewed once.
Her battle for residency began in 2010, at which time an immigration agent told her that backing from an employer was one way people could get residency.
In 2011, when issuing her first 12-month working visa, Immigration NZ recommended Ms Tigges get a qualification of some sort.
"That's why I took the job here and stayed on the low wage all this time," Ms Tigges said after learning her employer, McDonald's (Kamo), could not help her.
Ms Tigges' departure order coincides with fast food workers' Unite Union claims that McDonald's is taking advantage of vulnerable young migrant workers on student and temporary work visas.
A certificate from Ms Tigges' employer relating to her barista training helped with her last visa renewal but was rejected in the latest application because it was not an essential skill or job a New Zealand worker could not fill.
Ms Tigges said she had enrolled with the Open Polytechnic knowing her second work visa would run out before she could sit her final exams but was expecting to get residency.
She now hopes to gain some kind of qualification in Germany so that once her three-year stand-down period for re-entering New Zealand is finished, she can return.
Ms Tigges said she could not afford to continue her New Zealand business diploma study in Germany but an Open Polytechnic spokeswoman said that having not been a resident here when she enrolled, Ms Tigges had probably already paid the international level fees.