Monday March 10, 2008

As more New Zealand residents quit the country, wannabe Kiwis say the key obstacle to calling Aotearoa home is the Immigration Service.

Long delays, missing documents and a lack of general knowledge among immigration officers were just some of the things residency applicants who spoke to the Herald complained of.Singaporean entertainer William David accused the service of incompetence and described his experience as "a nightmare you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy".

"They lost my medical documents and made me go through the entire process three times. My case manager didn't know where Singapore was, arguing that it is a small village and not a country, and he also said he couldn't view the DVDs I submitted to support my application because he didn't have a DVD player," said Mr David, who is applying for residency under the talent visa category.

In November 2006, his wife missed her mother's funeral in Singapore because the service did not release her passport, which he said had been in its possession for almost six months.

A Malaysian applicant, who did not wish to be named for fear it could jeopardise his application as a skilled migrant, described his case manager as "ignorant". "I couldn't believe it when my case manager asked me if Malaysia was a state in Africa, probably mistaking it for Malawi," he said.  "I shudder at the thought that the fate of me and my family ... rests with these people."

Amritbhai Vallabhbhai Patel, who lives in New Delhi, applied for New Zealand residency in 2005 to join his family here, but as of yesterday he still had not received news on the status of his application. His sister Chanchal Puna said: "It is causing my parents and siblings a lot of stress and I think it is very cruel for NZIS to be playing with people's lives like that."

Through an immigration consultant, she sought an answer from the service. The reply she got from its Asia and Middle East regional manager, Marie Sullivan, said: "The application lodged on 11 August 2005 was placed in a managed queue of low-priority applications ... it was allocated to a visa officer on November 2006"- more than a year after it was submitted at the New Delhi branch office.

The letter, dated February 27, also said because the New Delhi branch "has received a larger than expected increase in the volume of applications ... the processing of permanent residence applications has been put on hold temporarily".

A spokeswoman for the service could not comment yesterday.

"Three years is a ridiculously long time to be waiting for an answer," Ms Puna said, "and if they didn't have the resources to process applications then they should not have accepted our fees and the applications to start with."

Mr David and Mr Patel have filed complaints against the Immigration Service to the Office of the Ombudsmen.
Maria Shearer, a former immigration officer, said high staff turnover and the revamp of the application processing systems were to be blamed for some of the poor service.

"Since it changed the 'one case manager to one applicant [system]' to a factory-like system where a single application is passed on to up to five different officers, there has been an increase in cases of lost documents and misplaced passports.
"Also, there is a very high staff turnover and there isn't a standard for officers to assess cases, and different people have different standards."

The Department of Labour, which oversees the Immigration Service, told the Herald it was not prepared to discuss individual applications.

(Source Lincoln Tan NZ Herald)