Immigration Updates.
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Immigration Advisers, NZIS & Immigration issues
There’s actually been quite a lot happening on the immigration front here – I’e just been too lazy (and too depressed by it all) to blog about it. So Instead of writing an stream of rather sad and depressing posts – I decided to do it in one short sharp shock, and write an update instead.
1/ Immigration New Zealand being idiotic over relationship statuses.
It’s an annoyance that never seems to go away – but another couple are being harassed my INZ over the fact that INZ don’t believe their relationship is real. They have a baby together, and they are in fact married – but that is not enough for the bean counters and paper shufflers at INZ.
Despite him being married and with a child on the way, Immigration NZ visa services manager Jan Clark said proof of a shared home, finances, belongings and household chores were required to prove they were a genuine couple.
Marriage certificate and – dare I say it – an advanced pregnancy – isn’t enough???? A few years ago, I came across a poster on a forum who had to go through this farce despite being married for 40 years. Before joint bank accounts were common. At the end of the day lack of knowledge on the part of immigration staff does not constitute a lack of relationship on an immigrants part. So this isn’t a one-off situation.
Joint Bank Accounts and bills. It’s a necessity if you don’t want to have to deal with this kind of crap.
2/ More Kiwi’s employ slave immigrant labour.
This it has to be said, affects mostly ethnic minority or pacific islander immigrants, who seem to be less confident and knowledgeable about their rights and the law. That is not to say that western immigrants don’t get similar treatment, but it tends to be of a lesser scale (paid considerably less, conned into taking 2 year work visa positions and forced to do a job that differs markedly from that applied for or you lose your visa- that sort of thing).
In this case – a Wellington “businesswoman” – whose identity is protected by name suppression laws, employed 2 Fijians, did not pay them the minimum wage, and did not pay them holiday pay. She also employed them illegally while they were here on visitors visas.
3/ Immigration Adviser holds on to a passport for over a year.
This is a bit of an odd one, as I can’t find the adviser listed at the IAA, even under past licence holders. So hopefully this guy, Piliki Talanoa, will be prosecuted under the Immigration Advisers Licencing Act. His client, a hairdresser by trade, gave him the passport last September in order to get a work visa renewal. The agent apparetly closed his office down last month, at which point the police managed to get the passport back.
Mr Talanoa says Mr Cohen changed his mind about which category visa he wanted to apply for and that caused the delay, a claim Mr Cohen strongly denies.
A hairdresser by trade, Mr Cohen says he’s pleased to have his passport back and hopes to have a new work permit approved by Immigration New Zealand. But the delays have cost him the chance to apply for residency, he says.
“I have to apply for a work permit from the beginning.”
His advice to other people seeking work permits is to deal directly with Immigration New Zealand.
Mr Talanoa wouldn’t discuss why he abandoned his former office in Otahuhu so suddenly.
But property manager Johan Ackerman says Mr Talanoa had already left the property when the owners showed up to evict him.
Hmmm, there’s a story there – including why he doesn’t appear to have ever held an Immigration Advisers licence. Of course the IAA has no authority to read this article and act on its contents unless someone makes a complaint. The police haven’t charged Mr Talanoa with anything. Question is: why not?
4/ A good news story – 102 year old bypasses the system.
I say good news – as it undoubtedly is for the lady who has been given a 3 year visitor visa instead of the normal 6 months, and for her daughter. It’s not so good though for the hundreds if not thousands of people who refused help or consideration from the Immigration Ministry. So on the one hand I am chuffed to bits about this one, on the other hand it annoys me considerably.
The details are that Louise Sydes UK rest home was being closed, and rather than be relocated, she wanted to move to be with her daughter in Auckland. They contacted the Immigration Minsiter’s office and appear to have just asked them to let her stay. Ive read 2 articles about this – neither of them mention anything about going via Immigration New Zealand, or applying for residency via the family stream, or indeed having to pass the stringent medical tests.
Speaking from New Zealand her daughter Sue Pearson said she was ‘excited’.
She said: ‘Usually family members are only allowed to come for six months but we wrote to the minister of immigration who granted us permission for her to come and live with us.
Given the desperate needs of some people I have come across to get a visa to live in New Zealand, and the crap they have to go through to get it – IF they get it (often they don’t)- I cant help but be a little angry about this. It does kinda make a mockery out of the pain of other families who are refused the right to live together.
5/ Another Indian family facing deportation.
Pooja Kapila, whose husband Satinder is in Waikeria Prison awaiting deportation, was so desperate to avoid what she says is the death sentence of being returned to the slums of the Punjab that she refused to sign the documents presented to her at their Te Puke home on October 21.
They have been living here in New Zealand for 10 years. They have three children, one of them is a New Zealand citizen by birth, having been born here just one year after they arrived. This was before the loophole allowing this to happen was closed. Now I’m probably going to come over as heartless and cold on this – but I really think in case like this we cannot keep holding INZ to blame. Often from reading these kinds of articles, I find I end up making a judgement (based on very little information) about whether I feel the families should be allowed to stay or not. I really cant work out why in other cases I feel compassion, but in this one I don’t. Perhaps it’s because the third child was born so soon after arriving, perhaps it’s because after 10 years of living in New Zealand Mrs Kapila needs an interpreter. Perhaps it’s because once again “celebrity” Immigration Adviser Tuariki Delamere is involved.
As is often the case with these articles – they are full of emotion, and short on facts. As is also often the case, the comments with the article are somewhat enlightening.
Man bashes wife: he gets 2 years in NZ, she gets deported???
As with many of these articles in the papers about immigration, details in the article raises a number of questions of accuracy, but if this is in any way true – INZ should be ashamed.
A woman who has lived in New Zealand for four years and left her abusive husband has been denied residency because of his convictions for crimes against her.
Does that make any sense to anyone? Sure – deny him residency – if he has a conviction for domestic violence he doesn’t pass the clean record. I can see the process and procedure that means that she doesn’t get it – because shes the secondary applicant. So if he loses residency then so does she automatically. But is it right?
Timmons and her ex-husband, a plumber, and their two children arrived from London in 2007. He was granted a work permit and, in September 2008, lodged a residence application for the entire family under the skilled migrant category. Immigration New Zealand approved it in principle in February 2009.
The couple needed to send in their passports and a $1050 fee but Timmons left her husband before the process was completed. As a result, she and the children were illegal immigrants, and she was told she had to leave the country.
So she was, along with the husband, actually granted residency, but because she has the guts to leave an abusive husband, she has slipped through the gap.
What we don’t know from the article is whether or not she tried to get the residency visa, and was denied, or while spitting up with the abuser, didn’t actually send in the fee and passports. I personally don’t see how either of things should be insurmountable by a well staffed professional immigration department.
He left New Zealand for eight months before returning this year on a two-year visitor’s permit.
So how the &*%%*^%%*$*$ did he get back into New Zealand on a 2 year visitor permit if there is clearly a record of him being party to domestic violence? How did he get a 2 year visitors visa at all? Why on earth would immigration let anyone in the country on a 2 year visitor visa, when they have clearly tried to gain residency before, and appear to be looking to do so again.
An appeal to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal failed because it found there were “no exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature that would make it unjust or unduly harsh for the appellant to be removed”.
I cant find any link at the IPT to the case. In fact their online records decisions is pathetic – it looks like in changing the name of the department, someone seems to have forgotten that records should be kept up to date. If anyone manages to find it, please do let me know. This will actually have most of the details, and often fills in the gaps of the newspaper reporting. That being said, I have noticed that the IPT, and the RRB before them have a tendency to back INZ to the hilt. INZ have to really ticked someone off for a decision to be overturned by the tribunal.
Invest $700,000 in a New Zealand business and get kicked out anyway.
Martyn Payne did exactly that, and it seems that no one can really understand what the hell Immigration New Zealand and the Minister office are thinking in deporting a family that invested that kind of money here and built a thriving business out of one that was run down and going nowhere. Martyn and his family looks to have done everything right – bring money, buy a business, turn it around, and employ Kiwis.
So what did he do wrong? Well, Martyn it seems had the bad luck to have a heart problem, which is cleared up and has been checked by specialists and Okayed.
A medical examination six years ago revealed Mr Payne had a heart issue. Immigration believes he might require healthcare in the future, and it’s not prepared to pay, so Mr Payne is being deported.
He had an operation in England and passed the test.
“The operation was a success – I got a letter from the specialist saying I was fully recovered,” Mr Payne said.
But four years later the Department of Immigration requested another medical
“They asked me to have another test. I had a fibrillation, which means the heart beat is irregular, which means I have to have a jump start.”
He disagreed with the findings, and went to a doctor who specialises in heart disease. Dr Brendon Wong said although Mr Payne has a dilated impaired heart muscle, he is coping well.
Mr Payne says he’s prepared to pay for follow-up tests, but there is no evidence he will need heart surgery in the future
But as we know personally – sometimes no matter what you can prove – INZ will not listen and will not accept that proof. And to be honest – who the hell cares if he has a heart problem and may at some point in the future cost NZ a bit of money in healthcare costs - he invested $700,000 sodding dollars in your cournty which you were perfectly happy to take. He’s built up a business that pays taxes, employs kiwis that pay taxes, has a family which works and pays taxes.
There is no sense in this decision. None. The concept of Fairness and Natural Justice just got crapped on here I feel.
Unfortunately Mr Payne had a Business Visa, not a residency Visa, and while he seems to have got through the medical process first time round, INZ just wouldn’t let him through the second time round. But I personally know of people who have got residency in New Zealand after having major heart issues – so it’s not the policy that forced this issue. It’s individuals who have decided that despite all Mr Payne and his family have given to NZ – and what the medical tests show - what he may cost them at some undetermined point in the future is vastly more improtant. It’s not clear from any of the articles whether he was applying for residency, or was looking to get a further business visa. Either way, INZ and Kate Wilkinson (Associate Immigration Minsiter) have ended up looking cruel, stupid and selfish.
I also think its about bloody time that INZ looked long and hard at the doctors it employs to do the mediacl assesments – because some of them are idiots. If all the evidence Mr Payne has provided says he’s fine, and the only people saying he isn’t are the INZ Medical Assesors – then INZ should be sacking those doctors, not deporting someone that has evidence that he is in good health.
I wish Martyn and his family the very best, and hope one day they find a way to beat this and stick 2 fingers up to INZ for the sheer absurdity of all this. I really feel for them – this is exactly what we went through with my Dad – prove, prove and prove again that hos health was acceptable and meet an arrogant and ignorant brick wall of INZ staffers.
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Why are migrants in New Zealand still ending up as Taxi Drivers?
Wellington’s new mayor Celia Wade-Brown is the papers today saying that the city has too many taxis. It seems this is because there was deregulation back in 1989, and the local authority is no longer able to put a cap on the number of licences sold to drivers.
The depressing thing about this is the number of times the oversupply of taxis in the city is blamed on migrants getting licences (presumably because they cant get work in the area they are qualified in). Also, it seems that WINZ (Work and Income NZ – the department that deal with unemployment and benefits) is in some ways funding this happening.
Celia Wade-Brown believes part of the problem stems from “overqualified” immigrants being funded by Work and Income into an industry that has hit saturation point.
The outcome of this is that there are too many taxis for the demand, which results in lower wages for the drivers. Not a good outcome, and not the point of immigration.
But to me the question is why – and how – is this happening? When the New Zealand government brought in the Skilled Migrant Category (7 years ago now), the whole point of it was to stop highly qualified immigrants from taking low paid and low skilled jobs. Ironically – driving taxis was the job used to illustrate the point – with physicists and doctors mentioned regularly. Originally – it was touted as ensuring this wouldnt happen because you would not be able to get residency unless you had a job. At the time, we wondered how anyone in the Department of Labour, or the government hadn’t spotted that with a minimum points level of 100, there were bound to be highly qualified people who could immigrate without a job.
But ho hum – no one asked our opinion!
And then when they get here, especially given that it is not cheap to live here – what the hell else was going to happen – they need work to live. And if you have residency (as opposed to a work visa) you can in fact do whatever job you like, so what the hell else are people gonna do?
So it like if nothing else, scrapping the old immigration and replacing it with a brand spanking new one didn’t really have the desired effect.
So, to the Immigration Staffer we spoke to at one of the expos in the UK before we applied, who snottily informed us that if we didn’t have enough points to meet the cutoff (195 at the time), because we couldn’t get a job,it was clearly because we were not good enough and only people who were good enough to get a job would get in:
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Immigration agents still claiming that INZ gives them an advantage.
A press release from Access Immigration popped up on Google News today, and in it was this wonderful little gem:
Mr Milnes adds that Access Immigration’s experience and high standards are increasingly respected by Immigration New Zealand, which accordingly provides the company and its clients with an outstanding quality of service.
Now, call me stuffy – but you aren’t actually supposed to say that, and you sure as hell shouldn’t be speaking for INZ. It is totally unethical in my view to “claim” that INZ respects your company – its up to INZ to say that if they in fact do respect your company. Because if you are getting an advantage from INZ, then that means INZ are not treating all cases fairly on their merits – and that’s corrupt – and not at all what INZ wants us – the immigrants - to believe. INZ have said time and again that they do not treat applications from agents any differently to applications from individuals. It isn’t INZ’s place to “respect” an agency either above another agency, or an individual applicant. Their job is to judge the merits of an application.
This kind of dodgy advertising should be stamped on immediately by the IAA unless there is a written statement from Immigration itself to back it up.
I mentioned a while back that the IAA was being used by its members to try and get INZ to give them an advantage – a complete abuse of the purpose of the IAA.
Some Good news from the IAA!
According to the latest newsletter, it seems the IAA are going to publish details of court cases where agents who have been refused licenses have contested that decision in court. Its a small positive – but it is indeed something they have done that I can actually agree with!
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There’s another new immigration Visa on the way
It turns out that Jonathan Coleman, the immigration minister has come up with a new “Interim Visa” to cover the time between someones work visa runs out and INZ supplying a new one. Except its not available till next March.
”The new interim visa is a bonus for businesses. In most circumstances it provides continuity in the workplace as employers have the security of knowing their staff member can continue working legally while Immigration New Zealand processes their application,” Dr Coleman says. ”For some time temporary migrants have been falling through the gaps because in the period between applying for a new permit and receiving that permit, their legal immigration status has lapsed. Knowing they can maintain lawful status while applying for a new visa will provide peace of mind for migrants.”
Umm – but don’t some people get a short term work visa anyway to cover this? And I don’t want to seem picky(honestly – I really don’t), but why should we need a new Visa to be created? Why can’t it be as simple as INZ staff having the ability to extend the work visa already granted to cover this period? But anyway – while I feel another level of bureaucracy is never the best way to solve a problem – at least the problem is being dealt with. Again – something that can only make life easier for people who have emigrated to New Zealand.
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Investigation into Staff at INZ continue :)
It seems that more and more Immigration New Zealand staff are being investigated for misconduct.
I blogged a while back about 7 staff being sacked, but it seems that by the 16th August this year, 32 allegations against immigration staff were being investigated, and that number now stands at 34. 18 of them are about staff in New Zealand itself, and 16 are about staff abroad (though no indications about where abroad – but it’s worth remembering that of the 7 sacked earlier this year, 6 of them were in New Zealand and 1 in Delhi. It also turns out that 5 of the seven sacked were long term employees of INZ, so this cant be blamed on new people not knowing the roles of conduct.
Labour’s immigration spokesman, Pete Hodgson, said it was “concerning” that the department had such a high number of staff facing investigations.
To be slightly fair here – there was never a published complaints procedure until recently, so perhaps people didn’t know they could complain while the immigration minister was a Labour MP. Or perhaps the sheer volume of work visas being declined arbitrarily becuase of the recession has something to do with it? The article doesn’t say, and without more information on what the complaints are about – theres no way of knowing.
“The question is how long have they been crooked, and how many of the visas have already been inappropriately granted or declined?” Mr Hodgson asked.
Well, as long as they could get away with it I would have thought. Which is exactly what I have said time and again during our attempt to make a complaint. If my parent’s case officer got away once with lying to our MP, without so much as a sniffle from the Department of Labour – hes sure as hell going to do it again!
In the past 12 months, immigration officials faced 60 allegations of fraud, corruption and dishonesty, of which 10 were substantiated, 27 unsubstantiated and 23 were being investigated, Mr Bickle said.
The substantiated allegations related to systems misuse, misconduct and corruption and have resulted in the seven dismissals, four written warnings, one final written warning, one resignation and one suspension.
I would be interested to know how many allegation were made in the 12 months before that.
Mr Bickle said the department investigated all allegations that were made.
Actually – you don’t. Some of them you choose to ignore. And to be honest you can hardly expect your staff to be squeakily clean in the honesty stakes if you are going to fudge an issue like that. Of course you could actually investigate the 5 allegations we made that you ignored. I’d be OK with that as a method of fixing that little oversight!
A colleague of a staff member under investigation for system misuse said the agency was “acting on every tiny complaint” in recent months, and this was affecting morale. “People make allegations when decisions don’t go their way, and it’s really a waste of time and resources when every one is being investigated,” said the officer.
“There seems to be more of a ‘big brother’ culture now at Immigration and some of us just feel like we’re being watched a lot more.”
My heart bleeds. Really it does!
Jeeze – get a grip. Of course every little complaint should be investigated. You are charged with protecting the very borders of this great country – an excuse used time and again by INZ officials when they are being belligerent, unhelpful and downright obnoxious to applicants. You ask the same questions over and over again, and refuse to believe the evidence – so quite frankly – welcome to our world. You are more than happy to waste our time and resources! I hope you like what it feels like – and I hope you remember this when an applicant is begging you for some common sense and help becuase they are tearing their hair out trying to deal with obstinate and rude case officers.
He did not want to be identified because he said speaking to the media without authority could result in criminal charges, formal warning or immediate dismissal.
Absolute rubbish! Ok – you can get the sack for speaking out – same as most government employees – but criminal charges??? Gimme a break! Not unless you are divulging state secrets. To be frank – I’m risking more criminal charges writing a blog about immigration issues – so shut the hell up and get a bloody grip!
I’m sure this won’t go on forever – but I’m also equally sure that there really needed to be a substantial clear out of the Immigration Department. There were just too many people there doing a crap job and not behaving honestly or with integrity. Those people need to be got rid of, and if this hasn’t happened before, it just a case of clearing out the deadwood.
And that can only be good news for future immigrants. 
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Since when is being pregnant an illness?
Once again, Immigration New Zealand are making the lives of an immigrant couple a living nightmare becuase the woman has got pregnant.
How dare she!
A Brazilian couple who moved to New Zealand to start afresh have been caught in bureaucratic limbo because of an unplanned pregnancy.Marcio Tulio de Moura, 35, and his wife, Barbara Ohana de Sena Vieira, 26, applied for new temporary work visas this year but their applications were held up when a medical exam showed Barbara was pregnant.
She is five months’ pregnant and Immigration New Zealand says she does not meet the health requirements for a permit.
Mr Moura is eligible to apply for residency as a skilled migrant and can include his partner and their daughter, Ana, 4, but only if new work permits are granted.
It just makes me want to scream with frustration! Why are they still doing this? Why on earth is Pregnancy deemed to be such a danger to New Zealand? We have 2 people, working – one skilled as a stonemason, and becuase one of them is going to have take time off to give birth, they are deemed “unacceptable”?? Does New Zealand really want to be known as a country that behaves like this? Its clear they are not trying to rip the system off – they already been here contributing for 2 years.
Ms Vieira said she briefly considered an abortion – which is illegal in Brazil – but the couple want another child and decided against termination.
Right now, I am ashamed to live in a country that has put any family in that position. 
Immigration NZ manager of operations Simon Smith said a decision on the couple’s applications was pending.
I hope he has a fit of common sense! The information provided by the couple is being “assessed” so lets hope for their sake and their sanity that Immigration get that assessment done really fast, becuase to me – this is unacceptable. These people should be able to enjoy this pregnancy, not look on it with any amount of dread and uncertainty.
Yes, New Zealand needs to ensure that people don’t “rip the country off” and become pregnancy tourists – something that should have been negated anyway by closing access to automatic citizenship for anyone born in New Zealand. But surely this is just going too far.
Pregnancy is not an Appendix 10 Condition, so when applying for a residency permit, it actually doesn’t automatically disqualify you.However, Ms Vieira and Mr Moura are applying for Work Permits, and the rules are different, and as far as Immigration is concerned – you do not have an acceptable standard of health if you are pregnant, Which is quite frankly – nuts! Ok – look closely if this is a first time application – do you investigations – but not when people have given 2 years of their lives to your country already and proved themselves!
I wish them all the luck in the world!
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Employers can look at your immigration status directly???
In theory – I really don’t object too much to employers being able to check your visa status – after all, we would generally have to show them a copy of the visa to prove our eligibility to work for them. But today I read at Visa Bureau that Immigration New Zealand have set up an Online system called Visa View where potential employers can check you out.
Welcome to VisaView
This service allows New Zealand employers to access records held by Immigration New Zealand and to check whether a person who is not a New Zealand citizen is entitled to work in New Zealand.
It will provide a tracking mechanism so that employers can prove they are doing the proper checks – which helps them stay within new (and improved) immigration legislation that will come into force later this year. My only really beef with this is to wonder who INZ can so quickly set up a new online Information Sharing system so easily to employers, and yet cant tell what each of their offices is going yet, or send files electronically between offices yet. The mind boggles.
By the way the penalties for an employer taking on an immigrant that is not entitled to work in New Zealand is oddly enough a fraction of the penalties that can be imposed on an Immigrant for given unlicensed immigration advice.
You don’t say! And agents wonder why I an still so contemptuous of their law?
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Richard O’Brien is to be allowed into New Zealand :)
Really chuffed to be able to blog some good immigration news for a change: The associate immigration minister – Kate Wilkinson has apparently agreed to let the great Richard O’Brien have residence in New Zealand despite not fitting any of the current criteria.
O’Brien, 68, would still have to pass police and health checks, but Ms Wilkinson had said she would make exceptions on requirements for him to be 55 or under and have a job offer in New Zealand.
So basically – what they are saying is that he can apply under the Sibling Sponsorship rules, but not have to match teh age and job offer requirements – so its not quite as Rubber Stamped from the sounds of it as it might at first look. Still – its a step in the right direction.
They are expected the application to take about a month – so all I can say is I hope they don’t get my dad’s waste-of-space case officer (because it will go through the London Office) and I hope the even bigger waste-of-space Medical officer has retired by now on the grounds of gross imbecility. Otherwise Mr O’Brien could be in for a long haul.
But good news! It’s about time.
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