Family Sponsorship: The 2 year wait Update.
Finally we got around to sitting down with an excel spreadsheet, calculator, enormous amounts of coffee and a chocolate bar or two and crunched some numbers on Family Sponsorship.
The problem is that people are being told there is an 18 months to 2-year wait before a case officer is assigned. INZ have even put a news item up on their website about it.
Timeframes for Family Capped Applications
Thursday, 26 November 2009
New Zealand carefully plans allocation of permanent residence places.
The Government’s annual residence programme gives priority to skilled and business migrants and the partners of returning New Zealanders. The family capped stream (which comprises parent, adult child and sibling residence cases) is currently allocated 4,950 – 5500 places per year. Demand for these places currently exceeds supply.
There is a current waiting time of 18 -24 months for a place to become available within the cap. In practice this means that an application will usually take from 18-24 months from the time of lodgement to be allocated to a case officer for assessment.
On top of the three years you have to wait before you are eligible to sponsor your parents (and then even longer if like us you have a sibling you want to sponsor) it is becoming incredibly traumatic for people.
So – we have tried to see what is going on by looking at the fortnightly stats that come out with the Skilled Migrant EOI selections. Although this has nothing to do with Family Sponsorship – at the bottom of each PDF file is a little box which gives the numbers of applications currently being looked at. The numbers cumulate over the year, and reset in July – the end of the year for Immigration purposes.
This is total and utter bollocks. The queue is simply because the staff at INZ have been told to hold back applications until they get to the head of a “queue” in applications. It has absolutely nothing to do with the number of spaces available. The number of spaces is renewed each year. Are INZ suggesting that we should go and kill a couple of NZers to free us some space for our families.???
I think I may have been wrong!
I think what I actually should have said is thati t is a piss-poor attempt at an explanation because it make no sense whatsoever. But having actually looked at the numbers – I think I know what they were trying to say – but failed miserably.
So – what do the numbers really tell us?
1. By the end of January, 2454 of the maximum 5500 spaces have been allocated.
2. This leaves 3046 spaces that can be filled by the end of June (55% of the allocation is free with 5 months to go.)
3. INZ are processing on average 224 people each fortnight. (Starting with 12.8.09 -declines + acceptances)
4. Even with this being done – the number of people in the queue is increasing by an average of 75 people every fortnight.
5. Basically this means that there are about 300 people applying, and 224 decisions being made.
6. Only one fortnight have INZ actually managed to process more applications than came in.
7. Most depressingly – despite the huge overdemand for spaces – INZ let in just 41 people over its minimum allowance for this policy last year.
8. They could have allowed an extra 509 people to join thier families last year – those spaces are gone – they do not get rolled over into the next year allocation.
Now – how can you work out when you family should (very roughly speaking) get processed and get a decision?
See the highlighted line above? My Brother is one of those 131 people that entered the queue.
1. You need to know how many people were in the queue ahead of your family. (9897)
2. Take away how many applications people have been processed since then. (People declined + people accepted = 2459)
3. Which leaves 7438 people that need to be processed before my brother.
4. Work out how many fortnights that should take if they process an average of 224 people a fortnight (33 fortnights)
5. Get a strong drink.
Basically this means that from now – all else going well – we can expect to get a decision on my brothers application in 66 weeks, or about 15 months time. And he has already been in the queue for 6 months – giving a total of 21 months for the process.
And it’s just going to get worse.
The fact is that INZ are right in saying that more people are applying than there are spaces. They just utterly screwed up the explanation and have left people dazed and scared. There are “spaces”. There’s 3046 left this year! But there are 10,000 people waiting for them, and more lining up every week. Even if no one put in an application for the next 12 months, and INZ accepted everyone in the queue – that still accounts for 2 full years worth of spaces sitting in the pile right now.
You are not actually waiting for a space to become available as such – but you do have to wait in line till INZ have decided on all the cases that went in before you. In some ways I think what INZ have done in forcing the applications to be handled in turn is making the situation fairer -it’s not then a lottery about which branch you use or which case officer works faster. I just think they need to be more honest and clear about what is happening and why. (They can pay me to write their news items for a start!).
Please note: we have no way of knowing if this is the true reflection of what is happening. Please feel free to have a go at working through the numbers – and tell me if you get a different answer. The only way to know for definite what is going on would be to have an inside track at INZ – and we don’t. Working through the publicly available info probably won’t tell us everything – but hopefully it will help some of you to see WHY the wait is so long.
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Squandering skills
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, Jobs & Work
The Herald on Sunday today had a small article in their Career10 section, about how the ‘in demand’ skills of migrants are being squandered – or rather being ignored in the first place. [Sorry, no online copy that I can find]
It’s an all round in-offensive article that doesn’t really go anywhere. However it does provide a couple of useful pointers;
1. There is a mentoring scheme called OMEGA running for new migrants who don’t have a job yet. Only it’s limited to Auckland. Ho hum..
Still, OMEGA has the right idea, and it’s better than nothing. They run a number of different scheme’s to help new emigrants link up with employers and get some experience, understanding and knowledge of the Kiwi workplace.
I’m not familiar with OMEGA, more reading to come, so I’m not in a position to endorse it as such. They are there though, and in place to help new migrants. Something that’s rare and very welcome.
2. Kiwi employers tend to give preference in jobs to people they know. This is something we’ve mentioned previously, and the general thing is that most NZ cities are so small, anyone knows pretty much everyone else, or is related to them. {For example, a German migrant friend of ours was appearing in a Terry Pratchett play being put on by a local amateur dramatic society. We went. It was good, I talk about this to a colleague at work the next day. His aunt was playing one of the lead witches. It just works like that.}
Since many Kiwi companies are (relatively) small, they are indeed interviewing someone as if to invite them to join their family. They want to have confidence you will fit in with everyone else. Rather than being particular on exactly which industry certifications you’ve got in the last few years. Of course the down side is that if you’re new to the country, you wont know many people. And many people wont know you.
While you first job may not be ideal, it gets you working, bring money in, and starts to get you connected with others in the industry. This is when the whole ‘contacts’ and knowing people kicks in.
So my take? Don’t worry that much about not knowing people from the start, it’ll happen once you’re working and your next job can be that ideal one it would be great to land.
Which is exactly where OMEGA can fit in, helping people start even if it’s just a stepping stone to the job that really spins your wheels.
Tax Changes in New Zealand: What’s Going Down.
Filed under: Cost of living, Economics, General Budgeting, Jobs & Work
I thought I would start this with the (possibly) good news.
In fact this bit is really good – if the new Zealand government were do it, it could make life very cosy indeed for Skilled Migrants who can earn relatively high salaries. (Right up until New Zealand companies screw you over by saying that you don’t need to earn as much now anyway).
Top Income tax Rate could go to down to 30%.
At the moment if you earn over $70,000 (by no means what should be considered a high salary) you pay 38% tax on every dollar over that level. Now this is being touted as saving someone about $20 a week – which really isn’t a whole lot.
But what happens if you earn $100k a year?
I’ve worked out that if just the top tax bracket comes down from the current 38% to 30% then you end up paying $406 a month less in tax. So instead of your take home pay being about $5,831 it would now be $6,237.
That’s an extra 116 coffees a month!
(Rough calculations only – this does not include ACC or Kiwisaver deductions.)
Also, trust and company tax rates may be going down – but it’s a bit unclear. The Tax Working group says it wants to make personal, trust and company tax rates all the same to avoid people being able to siphon off income into lower tax bands. So dropping the personal tax rate to 30% and then dropping the company tax rate below its current 30% doesn’t actually make that happen.
Why is this happening?
Because looking at this graph below shows that until you earn over $240,000 a year in New Zealand, you are better off from an Income Tax point of view moving to Australia because their income tax rates are cheaper. This of course completely ignores whether the cost of living is higher in Australia – but its something that is causing a lot of Kiwi’s to move.
In fact – this whole tax report seems to start with the theory that personal income tax rates must come down. That takes up roughly 5 pages of the report. The other 74 pages are all about the taxes that need to go up in order to pay for it.
There’s a surprise.
We will apparently know exactly what the income tax rates will be in May this year – at the budget. When we will also get the bad news about who amongst us has to pay for it all.
I don’t think that’s going to be a good day for me.
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Work To Residency (WTR) problems – be warned!
The Philippines will place an advisory on its Foreign Affairs Ministry website warning its citizens about the perils of moving to New Zealand on the work-to-residence scheme. Herald Aricle here but ive copied most of it because it is so important.
(Hope they are licensed to do that!)
Under the scheme, applicants have nine months to come to New Zealand to seek skilled employment, and those who succeed qualify to apply for permanent residency.
Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman says it is made clear to applicants that there are no guarantees of work, job offers or residence.
(Yeah Right. I’m sure you really don’t make it crystal clear – I know damn well Immigration New Zealand do not, nor are licensed advisors. It takes migrants like me to do the dirty work for you. The fact is that Immigrants are not led to believe that this is anything but the land of milk and honey and things will be perfect. It’s not in the Ministers interest – nor INZ’s interest to tell you how difficult WTR can be – you have to figure it out. And it’s illegal for me to tell you – I have to wait till it’s reported in the paper so that I can cut and paste the information.
Have I said how stoopid this law is lately?
)
But Philippines consul-general Emilie Shi says Immigration New Zealand is not doing enough to warn would-be applicants about the difficulties of finding a job or telling them that Kiwis will be given preference by employers.
“Immigration New Zealand continues to say what a great place this country is to come live and work in, but they cover up the fact that it is very difficult to find a job here, or that they will be treated as second-class workers under the scheme,” Ms Shi said.
Most countries will give preference to home grown workers. And why wouldn’t they? We don’t have an automatic right to a job in our New Country just because we emigrated. If you come over here without a solid job offer – you are taking a risk – even with Permanent Residency. But with WTR – if you don’t get a job in the allowed time frame – you have to go home.
You need to understand this.
It’s the same with work visas.
You need to know what happens if you lose your job.
“The work-to-residence is a myopic policy, because even if these migrants prove their worth in their jobs, employers cannot renew their contracts when their work permits expire, and have to first offer their jobs to Kiwis.”
Take note of this.
Last year, a third of those who came from the Philippines under the policy failed to find skilled employment.
Filipinos form the largest group making use of the scheme – 63 per cent of the 681 applicants.
Many have sold everything to move to New Zealand in the hope of setting up a new life, and Ms Shi says her office in Takapuna on Auckland’s North Shore has been seeing at least one new case daily since September.
She said the policy was causing a lot of grief and anguish among Filipinos because many had sold everything to come and now faced a situation where they could not afford to return home or even send their children to school.
Ms Shi said desperate applicants were paying up to $40,000 to unscrupulous agents in her country who sold them hope of New Zealand residency, which was why many were prepared to sell their homes and belongings to come.
“These people hope that once one person can get residency, they will be able to sponsor their family members to also come here under Immigration’s family policy,” Ms Shi said.
“The embassy will be recommending to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to not allow any more of our citizens to come to New Zealand if they are not qualified, and we will be putting an advisory warning on the website.”
Dr Coleman would not comment on the proposed advisory, but defended the work-to-residence scheme and said there were no plans to discontinue it.
He said that each month about 70 work-to-residence permits were issued and research by Immigration New Zealand showed that at least two-thirds of these migrants could be expected to gain permanent residence, despite 44 per cent who came under the scheme failing to find skilled employment last year.
So basically – he’s not telling the truth. Even with typically massaged government figure you have a 33% chance of not being able to stay. The truth is its getting near a 50% failure rate.
NOT WORKING OUT
Work-to-residence scheme, 2009
Top source countries of migrants who failed to find skilled employment:
* Philippines: 150 (50 per cent)
* Singapore: 43 (14 per cent)
* Malaysia: 22 (7 per cent)
* India: 21 (7 per cent)
* Great Britain: 15 (5 per cent)
Not looking so bad for people from Britain, but why on earth are so many WTR visas being given to Filipinos if the numbers say they wont be given jobs? I’m guessing its all about the money!
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Adding Insult to Injury.
So, the Immigration advisors licensing act (IALA) is designed to stop people like me “harming migrants” with our advice – because of course our experience is going to be much more harmful that getting screwed out of thousands of pounds by crap agents.
So it was with a mix of incredulity, hilarity and disgust that I received a comment the other day from a different government department asking me to put their link on my blog so that my readers could access their site and gain “information galore” about immigrating to New Zealand.
Apparently – while one government department wants to send me to jail if I give advice because it will “harm migrants”, another government department wants to use my blog as free advertising despite the “harm” I have apparently done by giving said free advice.
At least they are consistent in being bloody hypocrites.
Obviously I refused to allow the comment, but sent a polite email:
Dear Sir,
It is against our policy to allow advertising on our website in the form of comments.
However, should you wish to advertise, please let us know and we can discuss suitable rates.
Please bear in mind that any advertisements need to adhere to the IALA and not in any way be able to be constituted as Immigration Advice.
Thank you very much for your interest in Avalon’s Guide.
I haven’t received a response.
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Passing the Medical Assesment
I’ve just received an email from the head of the Family Residence unit in Wellington in response to some questions. It took about 2 hours for him to reply – so things are looking up in the service department.
Back at the start of November I blogged about having to get further medical tests for my brother’s residency application.
Today, the Family Residency Manager has told us that my brother has “an acceptable standard of health”.
So we are through one major hurdle.
Unfortunatley we still have no idea how long the applciation will take before a case officer is assigned, but it does confirm that they are indeed getting the background work done prior to the CO been given the case to help timeframes along.
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Immigration New Zealand is still misleading people about Work To Residence Visas.
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, NZIS & Immigration issues
Lincoln Tan is reporting on the continuing trauma being caused to people who are being led to believe that a Work To Residence Visa will automatically mean you get Permanent Residency.
It won’t. And this is a prime example of why outlawing blogs like this is morally repugnant. INZ are misleading people, and it’s illegal to advise people what they should be doing. The Immigration minister should hang his head in shame.
The agency issued 2261 work-to-residence visas and permits last year despite 44 per cent of those immigrants already here on such visas failing to find employment.
But Agnes Granada of the Migrant Action Trust said the system was frivolous and totally irresponsible because it was destroying people’s lives.
“The work-to-residence permit is not a straight work permit, and migrants come here on the promise of permanency once they can get employment – but when there are no jobs for them, it becomes a trap.”
Make sure you too are not misled by either INZ itself, or your “licensed immigration advisor”. It is not in their interests to ensure that you understand what a work to residence visa is. They want your money, and if you get stuck here having sold everything up to make the move – you will find you are on your own.
Please, please, please understand that until you have Permanent residency – you do not have permanent residency.
It’s as simple as that. No matter what you are told by INZ or Advisors – that’s the simple fact. A work to Residency visa, work visa, or silver fern visa is NOT a residency visa. If you have any of those – be exceedingly careful of selling up everything, and be prepared to lose the lot if you do not keep some funds back to get home. Because INZ won’t give a toss about you once you have to go home.
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Anniversary Weekends in New Zealand – I’m off to the beach.
We have lots of bank holidays in New Zealand.
11 to be exact.
10 national days and then the anniversary days. And today is Wellington Anniversary day, so hubby gets a long weekend, and (if it stops raining for more than 5 minutes in the middle of what is supposed to be our summer) we are heading to the beach.
The only downside to bank holidays is the Surcharge you get in a lot of hotels, restaurants and cafes. Fortunately – our favourite haunt – Café Bambino in Carterton doesn’t charge it.
2010 Bank Holidays
New Years Day is Friday 1 January
Plus day following Monday 4 January
Waitangi Day is Saturday 6 February
Good Friday is Friday 2 April
Easter Monday is Monday 5 April
Anzac Day is Sunday 25 April
Queens Birthday is Monday 7 June
Labour Day Monday is 25 October
Christmas Day Saturday 25 December
Boxing Day Sunday 26 December
New Zealand Regional Anniversary Holidays
Southland anniversary day is Monday 18 January 2010;
Wellington anniversary day is Monday 25 January 2010;
Auckland anniversary day ; Monday 1 February 2010;
Nelson anniversary day Monday 1 February 2010,
Taranaki anniversary day Monday 8 March 2010
Otago anniversary day Monday 22 March 2010;
South Canterbury anniversary day; Monday 27 Sept 2010;
Hawkes Bay anniversary day; Friday 22 October 2010;
Marlborough anniversary day; Monday 1 November 2010
Canterbury anniversary day ; Friday 12 November 2010;
Westland anniversary day is Monday; Monday 29 November 2010;
Chatham Islands anniversary day Monday; Monday 30 November 2010;
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Tax Working Group – Why?
Filed under: Economics, For the numpties amongst us, Future Finances, General Budgeting, Investing in general, Jobs & Work, Property Investing
(Other than whacking “rich pricks” over the head with a big stick for being greedy of course.)
Well, for a start – the National Government claims it doesn’t actually want to increase overall tax. And if you believe that – I’m the tooth fairy.
What they want to do is move away from taxing income, to taxing capital – or wealth. For the purposes of this – you need to understand that Wealth is not about how much you earn – it’s about how much you own. So if you have scrimped and saved and accumulated assets that are worth money – they want to tax you on it. Because as previously discussed, it’s not fair that you scrimped and saved to accumulate wealth.
And if Income Tax is too high – it discourages people from getting better jobs and earning more money because they will lose too much of it in tax. And that of course means they have less money to spend. And economies don’t grow if people don’t spend.
The other main goal is to “align the tax rates”. This is because at the moment, the top rate of personal tax is 38%, whereas tax on trusts is 33% and tax on companies is 30%. Which means that taxpayers who would normally be charged 38% can “hide” their income in trusts and companies to reduce their tax.
So dropping the top tax rate to 30% should stop us having to do this.
To see why in theory they need to do this – you need to look at what happened when Michael “I hate rich people, even though I earned a whopping $276,000 a year plus tax-free expenses” Cullen, introduced the 39% income tax bracket.
What this shows is that the year after the tax was introduced, there was a huge spike in the number of people paying tax on 60k a year income, because they used measures to legally reduce their incomes down to that level.
So in trying to tax “rich” people – they kinda failed.
Now – the new government wants to make it “fairer” and stop that happening. Unfortunately there is every chance this too will fail – because in general – the richer people are, the more they can move and are prepared to make choices about where they live and what taxes they will pay. And there’s always loopholes.
Like us for example – who moved from the UK to get away from 51% tax on our income and new and more colourful taxes being imposed left right and centre.
So in general terms, lowering the top tax bracket is a good thing. I just can’t get my head round why taxing people who have invested is a good thing to replace it with. It’s kind of a big incentive not to be financially stable and able to support yourself in retirement.
Personally – in the perfect word in which I am the benevolent dictator for life – I would insist that Governments have to stick to strict budgets, have to stop throwing money away, and treat the money they take in taxes with some respect, and the taxpayers as something other than a constant deep well of extra funds every time they fail to stick to their budgets. Like setting an $11 million budget to refurbish the Supreme Court building and then spending $81 million instead because taxpayers won’t complain.
Which is like budgeting to retile your bathroom, and deciding instead to knock your 3 bed house down and build a 70 bedroom mansion instead, and demanding the overspend from your boss.
The thing about this is that if we as the people overspend each month – we cannot in fact go to our bosses and demand that they pay us more. But the government can do that with tax – because if you don’t pay it – they can send you to jail.
So while the “why” may be sensible and in some ways a good thing – it’s kinda fixing the wrong problem. We don’t need to give them any more taxes – they need to stop wasting the money they already screw out of us.
Please bear in mind that the Tax Working Group changes are recomendations – and may not happen.
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Tax isn’t fair – deal with it.
Filed under: Economics, For the numpties amongst us, Future Finances, Investing in general, Property Investing
Over the next year or so, there could be some huge changes to the way you will be taxed in New Zealand. There are a lot of strange assumptions, which are driving the recommended changes. A bunch of “experts” and academics called the “Tax Working Group” have come up with recommendations. However, here I thought it worth going back to one of the basic assumptions – A fair tax.
The headline at the moment is that property investors don’t pay tax, and in fact rort the system by getting tax refunds. This is because if you make any losses in your rental properties (and most of us do because rents in New Zealand are kept artificially low) then you can offset these against your income from a job and therefore pay less Income tax.It is blatantly ignored that you can do this with any business.Property investors (like us) are thought of as greedy “rich pricks” (a term coined by the typically potty-mouthed ex-finance minister Michael Cullen).
Of course, we personally are considered even more evil and greedy because Hubby has a well-paid job. It escapes most people that we worked our arses off to get qualified in order to earn that money. It’s not fair!
So – why do people think it’s unfair that we use a system to allow us to pay less tax?
Because most people have been conned into thinking that Tax is inevitable. Like death. Only it isn’t.
The fact is you do not have to be in anyway rich to legally cut your taxes. You just have to be smart. You also need to get your head round the fact that paying money you earn to someone else is not actually fair, and that the richer you are – the more you pay – is even less fair.
Let’s put it this way:
- If someone comes into your house and steals your TV – you go to the police and make a report. You make a claim against your insurance and get the money back to replace the TV.
- You don’t for one minute consider it fair that someone has come into your home and taken something that they may not be able to afford, and therefore have a right to steal it from you, because it’s not fair that you had the money to buy it and they didn’t.
- And yet – the government takes say 30% of the money you earn, and gives it to someone else. And you think this is OK because it’s called tax.
Here is something else to think about:
- While there is no “tax-free limit” to earnings for low income people the way there is in the UK, the bottom 40% of households pay no income tax because they get benefits to compensate.
- Yet the top 10% of earners in New Zealand pay 42% of the total income tax take.
- If you take out the 40% of people that effectively pay no tax because they get refunds distributed from higher tax payers, we are then responsible for a whopping 76% of the income tax take.
And yet we are the greedy ones for not wanting to pay so much of what we work our butts off to earn. Hell alone knows how much we would collectively pay if we didn’t have a way of offsetting tax.
It’s also worth noting that the HUGE tax benefit that property investors fleece off the government in Tax Refunds accounts for just 1.6% of the entire tax take.
Yep – we are about to get nailed to a cross then burned alive for a whopping 1.6% of the total tax budget – which will then be given to other people. I personally don’t think any of this is going to make that 40% who want our blood any richer.
But I could be wrong.
Over the next week or so we will be going over the recommendations (and they are just that – recommendations) and highlighting what they mean – good and bad.
If you want to see a good and funny illustration of why “tax cuts for the rich” are so wrongly maligned – have a look at this blog post: How tax cuts work.
And for some interesting facts about just how many evil greedy property investors there are in New Zealand – read Are Kiwis really obsessed with property?
And for a light hearted look at just what we personally think of the Inland Revenue (in any country) – take a look at Inland revenue Humour.
