Predictions for visa applications for the next 12 months or more
Things are definitely changing inside INZ recently as a direct result of all the bad press from migrant exploitation and poor work performance within Immigration New Zealand. This is a very topical news subject recently because we want to know that our public servants are doing their job properly. It often turns out that they are not doing their jobs properly (for example wanting to decline visas from their personal reasons rather than reasons set out in the legislation) and the media pick this up.
Migrant exploitation is an important issue and since the blame seems to have been placed on the AEWV visa itself, questions are raised at how INZ staff may not be doing their jobs properly. Then immigration officers come out swinging, blaming their managers for not managing them properly. This continues ad infinitum until everyone is pointing their fingers at everyone else.
What this results in though is pressure from above to check everything, then check it again. If in doubt, chuck it out and decline or PPI everything that even hints at not being straightforward. In the industry we are starting to see this happening already with meaningless PPIs and declines increasing. The same thing happened when Karel Sroubek was “mistakenly” granted residence by the then immigration Minister Iain Lees Galloway. After admitting this had been a mistake, residence applications were overly rigourously checked for quite some time after than and ridiculous PPIs raised for issues that should have just gone straight through.
This is what we are begining to see again, and it has three unfortunate results:
- Applicants that are actually eligible for a visa are declined unfairly.
- Applicants paying for hourly rate services end up paying a lot of money for professionals to battle INZ. (Hint - use set fees instead)
- Applicants who make mistakes on the application are accused of providing false information and find every other visa application after that a huge battle, or impossible
We can expect this to continue for at least a year or two. This attitude is close to the default stance of INZ anyway so it is generally easier for them to drift towards being overly tough than overly easy anyway. Once they perceive that either public scrutiny is off them or that non-compliant behaviour is no longer a problem, then things may relax again, but until then we expect every application is going to be a battle.
Because we always prepare every visa application with this expectation and have always done so, it is less of an issue for us than it would be for an amateur trying to apply themselves for example. Where we see this biggest differences is in offshore applications, especially visitor and student, and generally in self-made applications. It may seem unfair, but unfortunately it is the nature of our immigration system.