American pursuing Kiwi education wanting opportunity to work in USA in the future

[espaghet, BSN, RN]

Hi all,

I am currently working as a health care assistant in a rest home and dream of becoming a nurse. I am an American citizen who fell in love with a Kiwi boy while I was on working holiday in New Zealand and haven't come back to the USA since arriving in 2014. I am seriously considering applying for residency in a few months in order to stay in NZ with him and go to nursing school at the domestic (not international) rate somewhere in NZ.

It is cheaper and easier for me to do a nursing program here because there aren't as many prerequisites as the US programs require.

I would like to be able to work as an RN in NZ and the USA in the future. I am having a hard time finding out how hard it will be later to come back to the USA and work as an RN once completing my BN in NZ. I have heard that the NCLEX can be very hard to pass for foreign-educated students and that the US nursing programs focus more on obstetrics, for example.

Does anyone know about Kiwi nursing programs specifically? Or how hard it is to take a few classes in the USA to be fully prepared for the NCLEX while already having been through a non-American BN program?

Thank you so much for your consideration and feedback!