It’s A Kind Of Magic

I have been told a few times, by clients, that what we have managed to achieve for them has been “miraculous”. It is certainly a very nice thing to hear and I can appreciate that for someone who has only ever had to experience the NZ immigration process once or twice, that what we do, in certain circumstances, can seem a little magical or even miraculous. As flattering as it might be however, I am under no illusion that I can no sooner conjure up a visa out of thin air, than I can a Ferrari (sadly).

People come to us for this reason (not the magic but our ability to make things happen) and usually because something has gone wrong or more commonly because they want something done in a hurry. Timing and getting a decision quickly is something that almost all applicants wish for and why we wrote an entire article on that very topic last week. Obviously there are some situations, where timing is more crucial than others.

Priority!

Urgency is one of our most common requests.

For example, last week, we were approached by a family who were in the very unfortunate situation of having to farewell a family member who had very suddenly passed away. The problem was, that only half of the family was here in New Zealand and another part was in Samoa. We were asked to secure a Visitor Visa for one of the children offshore, in a hurry, for them to be able to travel only a few days later. We prepared and filed the application last Friday, it was approved on the following Monday and had it not been for the weekend, it would have been a less than 24 hour turnaround. A miracle!

A miraculous outcome to be sure and a relief for the family, but not so much magic as machinery and knowing how to make that machinery work. What really happened behind the scenes was a lot of careful negotiation, preparing a very solid application and shepherding it through the system to the right place and person.

In fact the machinery on offer by INZ broke more than once, so we had to rely on more old-fashioned methods, however knowing those methods were available and then being able to reach out to the right people, to get the application processed in a hurry was the real magic at play here.

Queues

Current wait times for a job check are 50 plus days.

But that does beg the question, if INZ can do things quickly, if you know how it all works, why not do them quickly for everyone? Why do we have endless queues and if you are stuck in a queue is there a way to get out of it?

The simple answer is resources, the more complicated and perhaps less delicate answer is some decidedly awkward approaches to management and staff retention as well as a fair bit of politics. Immigration New Zealand (INZ), like most Government departments is underfunded, understaffed and lacks any real profit-motive to get things done in a hurry. When you are the only operation in town offering the services you do, you can take as long as you like to deliver them.

It is no secret that staffing at Immigration New Zealand is a bit like filling trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Officers come and go quickly and as a result, there is a constant churn of knowledge with no one really knowing enough to do the job properly before they decide to leave.

So, as a result, INZ has too many applications to process and not enough bodies to process them. This leads to a system called “managed queues” which is INZ’s nice way of saying a queue where occasionally things happen and eventually your visa is processed. These queues stretch in and out like rubber bands - for example job checks for Work Visas used to be done in five days or less, INZ is now quoting 50 days or more. Work visas were taking a few weeks, now can take much longer, although this also depends on how well prepared and documented they are. This applies to all visa applications, the better prepared they are, the less work INZ has to do on them.

However there is a mechanism that allows an application to be prioritised and INZ calls it the “Escalation Process”. Basically if you can put forward a good enough reason for your case to be looked at faster, and they agree to it, you might skip that queue and be processed immediately. The bar for this process however is very high and requests get knocked back, more often than they get approved.

Success!

Not magic, but good planning and preparation are the key.

Navigating that process to a successful conclusion is something you don’t necessarily want to rely on and it is far better to plan ahead for potential delays, be prepared and do everything you can to avoid them. Success in this process, for most applicants is not a case of miracles, magic or pointy hats but comes down to good planning, good preparation and a well thought out application. The more prepared you are and the better presented the application is, the greater the chances of a speedy and successful outcome.

Of course every now and then, when the situation calls for it, we can pull of what might look like a miracle and INZ can and often do come to the party when the need is justified. Knowing when that can work and how to make it happen isn’t magic but of course is something that only those with a really solid understanding of the process (and the people involved in it) can pull off - maybe that is just a little magical.

Until next week.

The Author

Paul Janssen is a fully licensed immigration adviser with almost 20 years of experience, helping individuals and businesses to navigate the complexities of the immigration process.