The Humble Visitor Visa

Visa’s are confusing and the sheer volume of them can make choosing one, a bit like trying to pick the best desert off a menu in a foreign country. The humble visitor visa is one of those types of visas. It can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different migrants and despite having relatively few requirements, can be very easy to get wrong.

Immigration New Zealand processes thousands of temporary visas a day, for people from all walks of life and in all sorts of situations - the vast majority of these tend to be temporary visas and visitors make up a big percentage of those. For the most part, many of these visitor visa applications are “straight-forward” for people coming here to visit friends, family, or just to take in the sights - and New Zealand has many of those to take in.

However for others, a visitor visa is potentially a pathway to something else - it might mean the ability to come here and secure a job offer, or to be able to live together with your partner, or even provide the ability to undertake life-changing medical treatment. Whilst we have a “General Visitor Visa” designed to cover most tourists and family visits, we also have 33 other visitor visa types that are designed to allow entry for very specific circumstances - we even have a specific vsitor visa for German law students.

These special visitor visa options are designed to allow people to come here for a specific reason that isn’t related to work or any form of employment. Each of these separate types of visa have unique and usually very specific criteria that an applicant has to meet.

The humble visitor visa can actually be an incredibly useful one and opens the door to many more options in New Zealand. Ironically as the cheapest visa on offer, it has the most varieties and potentially is the most important for many would-be skilled migrants or work visa applicants. There is more to this humble little visa than meets the eye.

However, even with over 30 different flavours of this one visa category, there are plenty of people who fall through the cracks, without a specific visa for their situation. There are two that we deal with quite often and where the visitor visa can be useful, if tackled in the right way.

The Job Seeker

Despite the world “going digital” and everyone living their lives on Zoom or Teams, the New Zealand job market still relies, overwhelmingly, on in-person interviews and handshake deals. Employers over here like to meet, greet and eyeball their next star-player and inevitably that means for migrant applicants, there is a need to here, in-person, to press the flesh. In reality a good job search for the prospective migrant, happens onshore, where you can knock on doors, be available to meet at short notice, demonstrate to employers you are committed and gain better understand the local market by being in it.

However there is no “job search” visa that exists to facilitate this process and so applicants are often stuck in between wanting to be here to find a job and not knowing which visa to use to do just that. Television shows like border patrol also don’t help matters by showing the very small percentage of people who come here, get questioned on arrival and sent packing for working illegally (or perhaps doing something else they shouldn’t).

Whilst there is no specific visa for this job search process, there is also nothing illegal about coming here on a visitor visa to explore the job market, to attend interviews and to then be in a position to apply for a Work Visa if you are the lucky recipient of an offer. There is however a perception that if you come here to search for work, you are breaking the law and hence when people apply for visitor visas to travel over they keep quite about their plans to actually land a job. Many people sneak through the border on that basis, but some do get caught out when they arrive - having blasted Facebook with comments about never going home once they set foot in the land of the long white cloud (and yes INZ does check social media).

The irony of course is that you can avoid this issue by simply being smart about it and - this might sound very strange - telling INZ the truth. Because there is nothing unlawful about seeking out a job here on a visitor visa, there is nothing unlawful about declaring that as one of your plans on a visitor visa. Of course you should still be coming to visit as well and you need to demonstrate that you meet the rest of the requirements that form that visa application, but you can in fact be upfront with INZ as well. Done right, you then avoid the white-knuckle, sweat soaked journey through the arrivals hall, wondering if that customs officer is going to find the 150 copies of your CV you have stashed in your carry-on.

The Partner

In a similar way some partners to NZ citizens or Residents are caught in the visa crossfire as well, particularly if the couple have not been in a position to live under the same roof for any specific period of time. INZ has specific visas for partners but these rely on the couple having lived together and shared finances etc. There is no visa for people who have met, fallen in love, but conducted that relationship over distance (and Zoom and Teams).

However, if done right a visitor visa can also be used for this purpose and if there is enough evidence to show that a relationship exists and has existed for a while, there is ongoing communication and it all looks above board, then INZ will potentially play ball to issue a visitor visa for this purpose.

We recently assisted a couple in this exact situation and on the first round INZ declined the application, to which we went back (gloves on) and had it approved under this very principle. A couple can only live together if they can both legally be in the same place, and realistically the visa process is a key to that, hence, prepared in the right way a visitor visa can be the bridge between two countries for a couple looking to settle here permanently.

Of course, there is a bit more to it, than just applying and like the job-seeker scenario the type and amount of information you provide in these applications, as well as the explanations and arguments you put forward are absolutely vital. We have obviously become quite good at doing just that.

The Swiss Army Knife of Visas

In some ways the humble visitor visa could be described as the Swiss Army Knife of visas , given its versatility. On the one hand it can be a simple visa to allow someone the chance to visit a family member or to relive a Lord of the Rings fantasy in Hobbiton, but on the other, it can be the first step in a series of visa applications, that gives them the right to live, work and study here.

However within all of these variations and options and the different ways this visa is used, it is not hard for things to go wrong. Understanding that no matter what circumstances you are applying under, the fact that INZ will still assess you against the various tests for being “genuine” and “bona-fide” - when you are the round peg, pushing through the square hole, you need to think your application through very carefully.

Creative solutions when it comes to visas are ideas best left to the experts, and people who have done it before. If you are in one of these situations or perhaps something different that doesn’t quite fit within the rule book, talk to us today. We might just be able to find a way forward for you.

Until next week.