Persistence
There are a lot of very good quotes about the value of persistence, but one sticks out to me as being the perfect description of how some Visa application processes can feel , not only for the applicant but also for their adviser - “It always seems impossible until it is done”.
Nelson Mandela spoke those words in 2001, although for a client we recently assisted, he might as well have said them yesterday. Sometimes a task, journey or goal can seem so far away and so difficult to achieve and yet when you do manage to be successful in the endeavour, that sense of impossibility becomes the distant memory instead.
I imagine that this is how many migrants feel as they work their way through the labyrinth of rules, logistics and emotions that come with moving to a new country. Some migrants however, experience more of these obstacles than others and this is true of an applicant we have been working with over the last few months. It is a great story of persistence, patience and proof that sometimes staying the course is very much worth it.
Our client, originally from China, found herself smack in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle of immigration issues. She was given poor advice from another adviser that ultimately lead to an application having to be withdrawn, she had changed her mind part-way through the process in terms of her plans, leading INZ to think she was trying to be a bit too clever and then finally INZ had her marked as having potentially provided false and misleading information during the course of her previous applications - something they take very seriously.
There is a fairly lengthy and complicated back-story to how these issues came about, however the key issue, which is something I have written on extensively, is that her plans and intentions in New Zealand weren’t properly disclosed to INZ (through no fault of her own) and that then lead INZ to question these plans (and her intent), not once but in three separate and very lengthy letters. It is really important for all applicants that whatever their intentions are, they make those as clear as possible when they apply for a Visa. Of course intentions and plans can change and that is really where this client fell down a pretty deep hole with INZ. It also didn’t help that she was poorly advised along the way, but when she arrived with us, the issues were stacked up fairly high against her.
She had withdrawn a previous Student Visa application, simply because INZ had raised so many issues as to her declarations, her intentions, her previous documents and the fact that she was already studying without the Visa in hand (a mistake that plenty of people have made in the past). She had no idea what to do, or how to move forward. As we always do in these situations, we clarified that this wouldn’t be easy but having trawled through the details, it would be worth another attempt . We needed to clear the air, set the record straight and hope that INZ could see that there was nothing untoward in what this applicant was trying to do.
We did just that and submitted a new, fresh and more thoroughly documented application for this client. Her story made sense and she wasn’t the first client to have been ill-advised along the way.
INZ picked up the application and relatively quickly sent back a potentially prejudicial information (PPI) letter, outlining their concerns. The strange thing being that most of these concerns, we had already addressed, within the application itself. We set about responding and once again clarifying all of the various issues. INZ ackowledged the response, confirmed they were mulling it over and then we waited.
A few weeks later, we get another PPI letter, repeating much of the same, but adding in a few more concerns along the way. Nothing frustrates me more than lazy processing and it was starting to feel very much like that. This time INZ also began to focus in on why this client had applied for a Visitor Visa to travel here, declared on her arrival card she was interested in studying instead, and then shortly after arriving, pursued those studies in an English course. It seemed that INZ’s biggest issue was with the fact that she had changed her mind. Something most migrants do at some stage along the way. The problem is, how do you prove that someone changed their mind instead of trying to deceive the system intentionally.
Just to give this some context, receiving a PPI is for most applicants, the thing they dread the most - when you have prepared what you think is the perfect application and INZ sends you a 10 page letter explaining why it isn’t, is more than disheartening. For a good Adviser, a PPI should be more of an annoyance than anything else, because if you have prepared a good case, it should be a case that is successful. To get two of these, repeating themselves and with INZ arguing something as difficult to prove as “intent”, would test anyone’s patience.
With that patience running significantly more thin, we responded yet again and once more we explained that people (all of them, including migrants) are entitled to change their minds and migrants very often pursue other Visa pathways when they are here. In fact a large portion of the people working here already, have done just that - they arrived, decided to stay and applied for different types of Visas - yet INZ doesn’t haul everyone up who does jus that.
Another couple of weeks passed, and then we are advised that the first case officer had left and the file has been picked up by someone new - that someone new, obviously having to bring themselves up to speed on the file and all of the various arguments we had previously presented. We gave them some time to do this and then gently reminded them that this client had been waiting for quite some time for a result. We then received an update from this new officer.
At this stage, you would be expecting a decision (and an approval no less), however what came through was a third PPI. Once again, INZ were going around in circles and it was starting to make every one dizzy -including, it seemed, this new case officer. The client could very rightly have thrown in the towel and we might have been tempted to throw something else (at someone else) - however we weren’t backing down and instead we were climbing the ropes, in to the ring, ready for round three. This time however the gloves were coming off.
In our final response we made it clear that assumptions, hunches and guesses were not going to fly and that this client had done nothing even remotely justifying this third, fourth and fifth degree treatment. Sure, mistakes had been made, but very genuine ones and none of that undermined the fact she was clear in her plans, genuine in her intent and met the criteria.
This morning, the Visa was approved.
What seemed impossible to the client, had now been done - despite it taking three very lengthy and complicated arguments as well as knocking a little common sense in to not one but two different immigration officers. Sticking at it, staying the course and being confident in your position (and ability to argue that position) were the key. The client contributed enormously to the outcome by not giving up or simply walking away (where many a migrant would have).
For us, it is all about that persistence, and knowing when to deploy it. Measuring the potential success of an application at the very start, helps us work out whether staying the course is something we should do and is in the clients best interests. If this case had not had solid grounds to begin with, we would not have persisted, however it did and so we were happy to take on the challenge and take the fight back to INZ.
Of course, a lot of what we do is far more predictable and easy to manage, but for me, these are the applications that we most enjoy because they mean so much more to the people involved.
Until next week!
