immigration new zealand – back to the future

A while ago I was present at a meeting where the current Minster of Immigration, Michael Woodhouse, talked about the challenges and opportunities that he is faced with. Policy wise, changes will keep happening. Like the newly released Entrepreneur work and residence visa policy. He was clearly very proud of his first big policy overhaul.

There are several other policies that will get a make-over too in the not too distant future. Well, we will have to await the outcome of the national election later this year to see if we continue with a National led government or if there will be a Labour one. None the less, some policies are due for a make-over or at least a good review.
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Next to policy changes Immigration New Zealand is changing the way they work. More efficient, less overheads, less people, more computerized……. You know the drill. They are implementing a whole new computer system. And they are rolling it out slowly. They are afraid of another Novopay debacle. About two years ago all primary and secondary schools in the country went to a new payroll system. All in one go. It went terribly wrong. Teachers who did not get paid, who were underpaid and overpaid, annual leave balances that were incorrect, people who no longer worked in schools got paid again etc. It took months to get it all corrected and of course a whole lot of taxpayers money.

Immigration New Zealand rolls the system out slowly. Starting with the ‘easier’ bits, which then can be a test for the more complicated areas. Which is a good thing. It, of course, will go over budget and beyond the time frame first set because of bugs they discover ad tests they have to run again. But if this means we will end up with a system that works that might be worth it.

A part of the system involves the ‘front facing side of the business’. Meaning the website and the information you can find online. The second part, and more important part, involves the back facing side of Immigration New Zealand. This determines how, where and when your application will be processed. And where, in my opinion, the biggest gain is for all of us.   At present, your application is submitted to a particular branch (usually the one closest to where you are) and that is also where your application gets processed and decided. In the future your application can be submitted to one branch but can be sent to anywhere in the world to a branch office that has the capacity (or the shortest queue) to process your application. This hopefully means waiting and processing times will be slashed.

Another big win in this process is the introduction of the e-visa. No need to send in your passports anymore. A lot a people find this daunting to say the least. Your visa will be applied to your passport electronically and you do not get a visa sticker anymore. This will be a few years away though as they have to work through some issues that arise with having no physical visa sticker anymore and making sure the security of their system is state of the art. But it looks promising.