New Zealand's
Immigration Policy is becoming increasingly complex as the government
strives to keep migrant numbers within politically acceptable guidelines.
We have
heard that the New Zealand government departments are not entirely sanguine
about making immigration information easy to get. It has been suggested
that they sometimes seem to cultivate a certain vagueness on the subject
of immigration policy. Under the ‘new’ system there will not be an
automatic points pass mark which applicants will have to equal or exceed.
Instead there is to be a floating mark which may change from month to month,
no doubt depending upon the "quality" of applicants at that time. Clearly
the new system makes it much more difficult to get points in the first
place and then much more difficult for applicants to assess if their points
total will be enough to obtain a visa.
We have
been led to believe that the rationale behind this ‘new’ system and
it’s vagueness, is that NZIS, the New Zealand Immigration Service, doesn’t
want people figure out ways to 'beat' the point assessment system.
By not making immigration criteria and information entirely clear and precise,
the New Zealand Immigration Service lessen the chance of people being able
to 'creatively' tailor their applications. We’ll provide more information
on the of the New Zealand Immigration Service Passmark System at the end
of this article.
For this reason
immigration consultant firms become more and more of a necessity to assist
the prospective migrant through the rapidly changing situation. We talked
with Kim Saull of Malcolm Pacific International a immigration consultant
firm in Auckland. Kim Saull is the Manager of Malcolm Pacific. We asked
him a series of questions which we believe escapeartists would want answers
to - what follows is a compilation of what he told us in reply:
In answer
to your questions, quite frankly the first answer is for the potentional
migrant to make contact with us before they do anything else.
The reason
I begin by saying that is Immigration Policy is complex and too many people
go through the process only to find at the far end that they simply don't
meet any of the policy requirements and they've therefore spent many
months working towards a target they actually could never achieve.
In answer
to your questions, quite frankly the first answer is for the potentional
migrant to make contact with us before they do anything else.
The reason I begin by saying that is Immigration Policy is complex and
too many people go through the process only to find at the far end that
they simply don't meet any of the policy requirements and they've therefore
spent many months working towards a target they actually could never achieve.
The
first suggestions I would make then is that people considering New Zealand
residence should make contact with someone who will give them an accurate
and reliable assessment of their chances.
There are
many consultants who will do this. There are also many consultants who
do a very bad job of this. It is therefore our recommendation that
people wanting information should ensure that the consultant is a member
of the NZAMI (New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment).
There is no statutory requirement for immigration consultants to be registered
or even to prove any particular ability in the field. The NZAMI as a body
does take some responsibility for it's members and does have some teeth
in which to control the behaviour of it's members.
Consultants
should offer a free assessment service. I see increasingly people
on the internet charging for this service. It is an attempt to
cut down the work load and I would suggest as generally a sign of a one
man band who would not have the ability to handle the volume of enquiries.
The professional
assessment lets a person know exactly where they stand. As immigration
consultants we tell more people not to come to New Zealand than we do to
come to New Zealand.
It's simply
because the criteria are such that it excludes a significant number of
people. Each of those people, although perhaps bitterly disappointed,
now understand the how and why of their personal circumstances. If I was
to take an average I would suggest that something like 10% of people who
contact us actually meet the requirements of policy without the need for
any other additional requirements. That
leaves 90% of people who need to improve their personal circumstances in
some way. For approximately 40% of them that simply will not happen,
for a variety of reasons again personal to each circumstance, so I am obviously
reluctant to generalise. The balance of people probably will fall into
one or more of the categories available, more likely to be General Skills,
Business Investor or Family.
The greater majority will be potentially
General Skills applicants and most likely would need a job offer from a
New Zealand employer to attain the pass mark current at the time.
That is
the very difficult situation that we generally find ourselves in when giving
advice as part of our reports. Like any employer around the world few New
Zealand employers will take on people "sight unseen". If there is an
exception it would generally be in the IT industry for some people with
very high skill levels in very specific areas. Outside that it's unlikely
that anyone can produce a job offer "sight unseen". The prospective applicant
is therefore faced with the need to come to New Zealand for a period of
time to seek employment. You have to keep in mind here the situation for
the employer. The employer, when faced by two applicants one a New Zealand
resident and one a non-resident of equal skills, will probably tend to
choose the New Zealand resident. An applicant from off-shore is looking
at anything from 8 weeks to 12 months depending on which post the application
is lodged in and how efficient the immigration officers are. There
may even be no guarantee that the applicant will arrive within that period
of time as they would be very silly to sell up on the basis of lodging
an application. Some months the failure rate of applications has
been as high as 50%!
