Immigration Law - Your Inside News

Laurent Lore

June 2024

Good morning Simon,

In early April, Immigration NZ rolled out a set of changes to Accredited Employer Work Visa policy which people are still digesting. The clear intention is to discourage visas for what are seen as "low-skilled" workers. I describe some of the key points in a recent blog post.

At the same time, INZ is stepping up verification and investigation of employers who may be bad actors. It is also scrutinising visa applications of all types more tightly. People in the industry have complained about issues being raised, and visas being declined, upon unreasonable grounds. Some of this is because visa staff are often inexperienced or not well trained. This makes applying for Residence or for a temporary visa even more of a challenge.

We continue to solve the difficult situations people bring to us. The best way to arrange a meeting is to use our website's online booking system for a video call or a face-to-face meeting.

Simon Laurent

Principal

slaurent@laurentlaw.co.nz

Vlog on Partner Visas

James Turner has come up with the 2024 version of his video on Partnership visa applications. Watch it now.

This time, several specific case studies are presented which reflect just the sorts of scenarios which we regularly encounter when assisting couples to resolve their visa issues. You may recognise one of them as describing your case - if so, get in touch for an appointment.

SUCCESS STORY - Turning Your Life Around

In March the Immigration & Protection Tribunal cancelled our client's liability for deportation and directed INZ to grant him Residence. The decision explained how, while on a Work Visa, he had applied for Partner Residence, but the case took a long time to be decided. The stress of delays added to his unresolved childhood trauma from back in South Africa. Not only did he eventually get caught drink-driving, but did it again shortly afterwards while disqualified from driving.

We explained that our client had gone through a dark time, but after the shock of getting criminal charges against him, he took back control of his life and had achieved a leadership role in his small-town community in the middle of the North Island. The Tribunal agreed that for him to lose the progress he had made for himself, and for his wife and closely-knit NZ family to lose him, was exceptional and that a remedy was needed.

The IPT also found that it would be unjust or unduly harsh to deport him, and that his positive contributions to his family and to the community meant that it was not contrary to the public interest to allow him to stay.

This was one of those cases where telling the story, and telling it well, makes a positive difference to the outcome. It is something that we spend a lot of our time doing. We can step back from someone's situation and see it in the round - something people on their own find it hard to do - and this ability is just one way that we can add value to people who come to us for help.

English Language for Work Visas

Just a few days ago, INZ released a change to Visa Instructions which requires anyone applying for a Visitor Visa to provide "certified translations" of all documents that they supply which are not already in English.

There are a couple of things to say about this. Firstly, "certified" means that the translation must be done by a professional translator or translation company. They must mark the translation with a stamp or in some other way to show that they prepared the translation, and that they stand behind it for its accuracy. Obviously, for some people this is going to make it a lot more expensive to apply even for a tourist visa.

Secondly, the new rule states that if documents are not translated, INZ will decide the application based only on the documents which are in English. That is, they will ignore any untranslated material as if it was not there. This could be disastrous for someone who wants to prove that they have a life, job or wealth to go back to in their home country, and that they won't try to overstay their visit.

The Instructions do say that visa officers may choose to translate documents themselves "where they have the appropriate language skills". However, you cannot know in advance whether an official can read or write in your language, so that it would be dangerous to rely upon them doing this at their end.