Posts with tag: eoi

Letters from the Southern Man

Migrating is more than just filling in forms and submitting paperwork, its a complex process that will test even the most resilient of people. 

Understanding New Zealand is paramount to your immigration survival and to give you a realistic view of the country, its people and how we see the world, read our weekly Southern Man blogs. Often humorous, sometimes challenging, but always food for thought.

Four Golden Rules Sorely Tested

 

I think I have in the past shared with you my four golden rules for surviving the immigration process with some of your mental faculties left intact:

1. Assume nothing about your eligibility
2. Suspend logic – there is little to be found in the visa process
3. There’s a good chance when you think you understand the rules your Visa will be processed by an immigration officer who does not understand the rules
4. Don’t believe everything you read on the Immigration Department’s website

If this sounds a little uncharitable to the Department become a client of ours and you will very soon see what I mean.

Only this week I can give you good examples of all four rules in action.

Last week I wrote of the little drama over claims coming from the Christchurch Branch Work Visa Manager that he and his colleagues were going to ‘get tough on those entering New Zealand as visitors and subsequently applying for Work Visas’. This was obviously a real concern because entering New Zealand as a visitor with a view to exploring the country and checking it out (including employment opportunities) as a visitor is entirely lawful. If someone decides they like it, they find a job and wish to apply for a Work Visa that is not only entirely lawful but the way the labour market works. The Work Visa Manager in Christchurch expressed his surprise that employers and recruiters demanded to interview applicants in person and in New Zealand.

I asked his boss, the Branch Manager, to both explain what her position on those comments were and to consider granting my client a short term Work Visa as an exception while we resolved a relatively minor health issue that was holding things up.

If you recall both the case officer and the Work Visa Manager had flatly refused to consider this simple request.

To her credit she agreed and the client is now working with a 12 month work visa granted as an exception.

She has also in a nice sort of way put her employee back in his box by confirming my understanding of the law is accurate.

Which is good news for the city of Christchurch because if they wish to avoid living in the ruins of their downtown for all eternity this office is going to need to take a sensible and pragmatic approach to the conflicts that exist across Visitor, Work and Residence Visa policies and take a ’big picture’ approach to those, like my client, who travel to New Zealand as visitors, establish they are employable, establish this is a country they wish to settle in, secure work and apply for work visas followed, quite legitimately, by Residence Visas.

The Government could of course assist the officers in their task quite simply.

If a person has been selected from the skilled migrant pool with a job offer and they have been invited to apply for residence, the prima facie claim to that residence has been established. While we know that guarantees nothing in terms of Residence Visa outcomes and significant numbers of people who are invited to apply for residence are subsequently declined (often through no fault of their own) surely the creation of a temporary class of Work Visa for these people does not threaten the integrity of the immigration process?

To do so of course would be a clear breach of Golden rule # 2……

I have also been analysing some statistics on skilled migrant approval, decline and work to residence rates for INZ London, Beijing and Shanghai branches as part of our ongoing monitoring of decisions in those markets.

Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while will know that skilled migrant decline rates coming out of China two years ago were significant and hovered around 80% in Shanghai and Beijing for some time. After months of work and investigation we were able to force change on the Chinese branches which has led to the decline rates plummeting for all applicants. Although none of our cases were being declined we were being asked constantly to help those that had been declined who used other agents or had tried negotiating the process themselves.

In the latest statistics Work To Residence (WTR) Visa decisions still dominate with Shanghai granting around 80% of all Skilled Migration applicants the WTR visa and Beijing coming in just behind at 75%. Without tempting fate (or immigration officers) I can confirm that all of our clients since these officers were given ‘refresher training’ in the policy some 18 or so months ago have been granted Residence Visas following their interviews without leaving home.

Officers in those two Chinese branches continue to appear to ask them after the interview – ‘Is there any compelling reason why I should grant this family a Residence Visa?’ when the question policy actually asks is ‘Is there any compelling reason why I should not grant this family Residence Visas?”

While the fact that decline rates have plummeted is a vast improvement it is clear the de facto position of these two branches is to think that a Work Visa is the most appropriate outcome for applicants from their ‘catchment’. They expect virtually everyone they want to approve residence to get on planes, fly to New Zealand, find employment and then secure their residence.

When their colleagues in London continue to grant Residence Visas to the significant majority (upwards of 80%) of applicants from their markets of Europe, Africa, North and South America one can only ask why? What is the difference between Brazilian, German, French and Swiss applicants all of whom have English as a second language (and processed in London) and a Singaporean, Filipino and Malaysian most of whom have English as a first language (processed in China)?

Are Germans more employable in New Zealand than Singaporeans? Not in my experience. Are French more employable than Malaysians? Not in my experience.

So you see what I mean about my four golden rules – so much depends not on what category you apply under, whether that be temporary Work Visa or skilled migrant Residence Visa – it is where your visa is processed that is the single biggest indicator of the outcome on your application.

And that is quite wrong.

Until next week.

Southern Man - Iain MacLeod

 

Immigration changes and review...

As the end of the year bears down on us like a runaway freight train and I ponder the holiday season ahead it is worthwhile reviewing some of the changes to immigration policy and processes that have taken place this year.

Those of you that have followed our strong and sustained efforts to effect change in Immigration New Zealand (INZ) Beijing and Shanghai offices will be interested to know that Skilled Migrant decline rates this year:

• have fallen in Beijing from roughly 85% of all applications filed a little over a year ago to 35% today which brings that office pretty much in line with global INZ averages; and

• have decreased in Shanghai from roughly 85 % a little over a year ago to 50% today. That number is still too high and it is hard to understand with new management in place in both offices why this office has persistently high decline rates totally out of step with the rest of the world; and

• for all our clients through those two offices remains zero. In fact it is better than that – as far as I am aware every client, bar one,  in 2011 has been granted a Residence Visa following their settlement interview, one were granted Work to Residence Visas and none were declined. This reinforces the view that if you know what you are doing in this environment and don’t mind investing in  services like ours there is no reason for your application to be declined.

On 5 December new Long Term Skills Shortage List criteria have opened the floodgates to Engineers of many disciplines. Up until last week most Engineers needed job offers to qualify for residence of New Zealand. 

To avoid the need to get jobs, most Engineers had to gain bonus points for qualifications or work experience but the policy made this difficult for most as it was incredibly prescriptive and restrictive. The policy limited bonus points only to those Engineers who had a degree comparable to a New Zealand degree and whose degree was issued by a Washington Accord Signatory country (and only from the date the Accord was established). This meant those bonus points were very hard to get.

The new rules will allow far more Engineers to potentially qualify for Residence Visas without having job offers first which, as we all know, is like being helicoptered half way up Mount Everest rather than being made to climb it one step at a time from the bottom.

If you are an Engineer who holds a Bachelor’s Degree we urge you to get (back) in touch with us – your Christmas might have just come early.

However the party might be short lived given these lists are reviewed every six months and in a meeting with senior Government Officials earlier this week we did warn them that in our view they have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous and this change really opens the floodgates. 

Their response was just as we expected ‘Well, we can always take the occupation off the List of course…..’. 

Therefore there is a window of opportunity here that might not remain open for long. So this is a call to action for all those Engineers who might fancy moving here……

 

In other changes the criteria for ICT Specialists has changed but in discussing this with the INZ Officials we pointed out their changes were practically meaningless because of the way the new policy is worded. I won’t bore you with the detail but we are talking about the use of the word ‘and’ when they say “they think” they meant ‘or’.

How important it is to get this right because the policy as it is currently written will have zero impact when it was designed to open the game up a bit in particular for Telecommunications and Communications Engineers.

Change the word ‘and’ to ‘or’ and the outcomes will be very very different.

In the meantime however immigration officers and advisers can only base decisions and advice on the policy as it is written not as it was meant to be written. So right now it is no easier to claim and be awarded those bonus points but it may be soon. Watch this space.

We also raised the issue with INZ about English language. As many of you will know my colleagues and I have been undergoing in-depth training on Australian General Skills Policy by my business partner and great friend Myer Lipschitz who runs our Melbourne office. It seems logical to have a working knowledge of the policy and experts at our fingertips when the New Zealand Government has made it so hard to get in here and given it is often far easier to get PR of Australia.

One clear advantage of the Australian policy over ours is that applicants can score points for their level of English language. Certain applicants from particular countries are exempt from mandatory English testing so long as they are citizens of and ordinarily live in that country. If they need more points to qualify they can sit the IELTS and are rewarded for it – the better the English the higher their score and the ‘easier’ it is to meet the current pass marks.

We don’t operate like that but we should and we have suggested Immigration New Zealand look to  adopt something similar.

The reason for this is clear – there is no greater factor influencing a migrant’s ability to secure meaningful employment at the level they want and our policy settings seek than English language. The better, more fluent, less accented your English the more attractive you are to a New Zealand employer.

This would allow for better settlement outcomes through employment and we have urged the officials to take this message back to Wellington. 

It has also been fascinating to learn through Myer how for some clients who might need a job offer to qualify for New Zealand can in fact get PR here using Australia as the back door – and without a job.

This is because Australia is less concerned about jobs before dishing out PR Visas. In fact there are many clients that we can get into Australia without their leaving home. 

Which is brilliant because if they really wish to settle here in New Zealand all they have to do is travel through Australia on their way to NZ; activate the Australian Residence Visa automatically at the Australian airport on arrival, get on the next plane and be granted a Residence Visa of New Zealand automatically on arrival here. And we are done – hey presto! New Zealand PR.

Australia has become the welcome doormat to paradise!

Delicious!

If then we have assessed you as not qualifying for New Zealand without a job offer but you wish to explore using Australia as the welcome doormat and back door to New Zealand let us know and we can assess the possibilities. This pathway won’t suit everyone but if it works, is less risky and gets you here without having to actually live in Australia it might be worth some serious consideration.

With this the second to last Southern Man letter before I head to the beach house and spend a few weeks fishing, planting some more native trees and drinking (in some unhealthy quantity) great NZ, South African – just arrived by boat - along with Australian wine, sleeping in, swimming in the warm Pacific Ocean, barbequing in my new fire pit and lying on the beach under that quintessentially New Zealand of trees, the Pohutukawa, I look back on what has been another crazy year. And crazy it seems to have been.

Crazy economy

Crazy Earthquakes down south

Crazy bureaucrats

Crazy Europe

Crazy America

Crazy Julius Malema

Here at Immagine we are finishing on a very busy note which augurs well for next year. As we all take a bit of a break and reflect on our lives and the futures of our children where ever we may live, the uncertain economic times in which we exist, the seeming never ending pressures to deliver economic comfort to our family, being slaves to the capitalist machine, doing our best to keep our heads above the stormy economic seas economically, I hope gives us an opportunity to pause and think hard about what sort of future we really want for ourselves and our family.

Notwithstanding the difficult journey that migration presents, New Zealand really does present something of an oasis of sanity in a world seemingly mad and getting madder by the month.

As we always say, ‘NZ ain’t perfect’ but there are few places better in the world to raise a family than right here.

Until next week

Iain MacLeod -Southern Man

Once Were Communists

 

I remember quite distinctly when I was ten years old, sitting in the passenger seat of my mother’s old Austin 1100 being driven home from school having an in-depth discussion about the merits of communism with her. As you do when you are ten…… I simply couldn't comprehend a world in which people went hungry, where there were very rich and very poor people and I could not understand why everyone shouldn't receive the same advantages as everyone else.

My ten year old brain saw communism as the perfect solution to inequality in all its forms.

That of course was at the height of the Cold War and no doubt my mother was a little horrified at my left leaning tendencies given I was being raised in an otherwise upwardly mobile middle-class household. Knowing my mother she was probably also quietly proud of my caring, sharing attitude (which of course did not extend to offering to help with the dishes or mowing lawns…….).

But when I was ten I hadn’t yet heard of the Immigration Department and ‘public servants’ and the role they play in our lives.

Three decades on I confess I still wonder why there is reason for any child to go hungry on a planet with such abundance, but I can safely say I am no longer a Communist. Only because experience suggests that it doesn’t work. And I have the Immigration Department to ‘thank’ for that.

Before I go on I am the first to question unregulated total free market capitalism and concede it is far from ideal. But thus far nothing else has served us as well. It is arguably just less bad.

There is still nothing better than competition and the profit motive to drive efficiency, sensible decision making, innovation and growth – which of course creates, albeit unevenly at times, the means for all to partake in the advantages of everyone’s effort.

When you have no skin in the game and your salary rolls in each and every week regardless of performance, any incentive to improve output or the quality of your decisions evaporates.

In the 23 years I have been working as an Immigration Adviser one thing I have come to realize is that when there is no profit motive, the incentive for customer service and sensible outcomes flies out the window.

There are plenty of people who will advise would be migrants not to “waste their money” on Immigration Advisers or Lawyers to help them negotiate the complex bureaucracy that is moving from one country to another. The very fact that we are still in business after 23 years lends something of a lie to any belief that we don’t add value.

I could write a book about the stupidity and culture of paranoia we deal with all day with the Immigration Department and a second which might be titled ‘How many lives can I screw up today by not thinking too hard?’.

The Immigration Department likes to talk the talk but they can’t walk the walk and it takes a special kind of lunatic to continue working in this industry.

Although we deal with a handful of very good immigration officers and I believe that the majority do not set out to ruin lives, separate families, make inconsistent decisions and contradict themselves the lack of any profit motive and competition for the whole organisation diminishes their individual and collective need to think differently and no meaningful accountability does create the situation where the quality of decision making and service is poor.

Let me offer a couple of examples.

The first concerned an exchange that we were having with a senior officer inside the Immigration Department recently on a point of policy. The particular branch is known for exercising wide discretion i.e. ignoring the rules when it suits. Of course, sometimes this can work to a client’s advantage but equally it can also sometimes work to a client’s disadvantage. As a consequence we asked for clarification on where exactly this particular office was drawing the line in the sand over a particular criterion under the Skilled Migrant Category. The reply we got can best be summarised as follows:

We have no discretion in applying the policy, however, each case needs to be assessed on its merits as each is unique.

Now, is it just me, or is that somehow oxymoronic?

What they are saying is that they must follow the rules except when they don’t.

How is anyone meant to negotiate a process where an officer says we must strictly interpret and implement the rules yet it is each case on its merits?

The second recent example of what happens when you operate a monopoly without competition is revealed in a letter we received last week from INZ Shanghai. Many of you will be familiar with our dealings with that Branch, the problems they have had over the last 18 months with implementing consistent visa decision making outcomes, staff turnover and the resulting appalling level of knowledge of the rules by newly appointed and inexperienced case officers (compounded by employing staff who cannot adequately communicate in English).

We had filed the client’s residence application under the Skilled Migrant Category and the Department was writing to acknowledge receipt. This is what they said.

“Your application will be allocated to an Immigration Officer within seven months. Please note that as you are applying for residence without a skilled job offer from a New Zealand employer, it may be necessary to perform a settlement and contribution interview.

These can take time to plan and while we endeavour to complete these interviews and follow up assessment within our time frames, they can take longer to finalize and your application may take up to twelve months to complete from when it is allocated to an Immigration Officer”.

I did a double take because in the past three or four months it has taken between four and six weeks for clients’ Residence Visa applications to be allocated to a Case Officer following receipt; not seven months in this branch. Processing times thereafter to get to interview stage have generally been between two and four months with a final decision coming two to three weeks later - nothing at all like twelve months on top of seven.

The ‘time to plan’ an interview is in every other branch between a week or two.

I then wrote back to the Head of the Skilled Migrant Team asking if processing times had suddenly quadrupled and, if so, why?

The reply was dated 16 September:

“The good news is that our allocation today took us up to applications lodged on 5 August 2010. So right now the wait time is short.

We haven’t changed the acknowledgement letter ...... These acknowledgement letters are generic – applications for your clients wouldn’t usually take twelve months as they don’t tend to have the range of issues that some other applications have, for example, medical conditions where further tests are needed, and that then need to be considered for medical waivers”.

Someone help me to understand why they would do this?

Why would you write a letter to an Adviser talking about a nineteen month processing time when what you really meant was two to three months given the quality of the applications we present?

From where I am sitting any Government organization that has charged my client NZ$2,500.00 just to get to this point in processing fees owes it to its customers to not write generic letters, but to send something meaningful that won’t scare the bejesus out of the applicant or the Adviser.

Interesting also that the Senior Officer who penned this reply seems to feel that clients of IMMagine New Zealand are fitter and healthier than the norm. I strongly suspect this is not the case as many people come to us because they perceive their case is more complex specifically because of issues around health among other things (like the dangers of putting your lives in the hands of a jobs-for-life state functionary).

In my experience the Immigration Department mindlessly puts out letters saying processing times will be nineteen months so they can, with hand on heart, (and a degree of false pride) announce to anyone who wishes to listen that they meet 95% of their processing targets within the deadlines they lay down for themselves.

Which makes me wonder why they don’t say it is going to take ten years to process your Residence Visa and then they can say that they have a 100% success rate achieving their KPIs.

I strongly suspect if there was some competition for the work that they carry out then they might not adopt double speak in emails that would not be out of place in George Orwell’s novel 1984 and they might be a little less lazy and stop sending out generic letters and send out letters which correlate to processing reality.

Competition with some oversight inevitably brings efficiency and better service delivery. If only there was some competition for the Immigration Department.

Until next week...

Iain MacLeod - Southern Man

 

Skilled Migrant Pass Mark Analysis (Continued…)

In the latest pool draw on 24 August the Government selected the fewest Expressions of Interest in the past 12 months – a record low of only 501.

I sometimes feel like a very frustrated Sherlock Holmes, and in the absence of any public statements or explanations as to what they are doing, it is left to industry experts, such as myself, to analyse and speculate. I do however believe that the time for speculation is now well over and it is abundantly clear what the Government is doing. I wasn’t going to write about this again, until I heard the Minister of Immigration on the radio a few days ago talking about something unrelated but which makes quite clear the Government’s attitude towards migrant numbers.

Those of you that read my blog (apparently there are still a few!) will understand that historically to meet the annual quota of 27,000 skilled migrants each year, approximately 750 EOIs need to be selected every fortnight from the Skilled Migrant pool. This works out to be around 1575 people a fortnight (each EOI comprising around 2.1 people). A quick calculation reveals that if they were all approved that would mean over the 25 pool draws that take place each year, 38,750 people should get their Residence Visas. Given however, at least one in three fail to be granted permanent residence for various reasons then the Government ends up approving (in theory) around 27,000 plus or minus 10%.

Point being they need to select far more people than there are places available.

Around eighteen months ago the number of EOIs being selected fell to around 550 a fortnight (1150 people), which resulted in significantly higher pass marks from the beginning of 2010 through to the current time.

A few weeks ago the Deputy Chief Executive of the Immigration Department effectively told me in writing that my public musings on whether the Government had cut numbers was effectively correct; they had, they just hadn’t told anyone. And clearly had no intention to.

The Deputy Chief Executive also confirmed that as the economy improves he expects to start selecting more skilled migrants from of the pool.

Well the economy is improving; in fact it is improving fairly rapidly. New Zealand’s largest online jobs portal,www.seek.co.nz, has confirmed that job vacancies listed on their website are up 15% over a year earlier and have increased a highly significant 4.2% in the last month alone. Other job portals, such as Trademe.co.nz, report similar increases.

This is being borne out of what we are seeing in the market place with clients arriving from overseas who need to find jobs in order to gain points to obtain their Permanent Residence. Most of our IT and Engineering clients are finding work within three to five weeks and we have even had two Personal Assistants who have taken four weeks to find jobs from the time they stepped off the plane. Nothing provides stronger evidence of robust employment growth than PA’s and Secretaries finding work when they don’t have work visas first!! Twelve to fifteen months ago my advice to people who worked in this space was not to bother coming to New Zealand, because to find a job would be extremely difficult. What a difference a year can make.

Over 80% of those being selected from the pool have job offers and as I have noted previously, the actual numbers (forgetting percentages) of migrants finding work and then filing EOIs, has exploded in the last two months. In terms of principal applicants it is around 300 per week. That’s 300 migrant families that arrive, find at least one skilled job and file EOIs. Annualise that and you get around 15,000.

That makes it even harder to understand then why the number of Expressions of Interest being selected are down nearly 35% on what we know is required to meet the (now) three year rolling target of 85,000 skilled migrants or roughly 27,000 a year.

I believe however that the explanation lies in a comment the Minister made at a meeting last week with business people in Queenstown. That meeting had clearly been called in response to frustrations being expressed by employers in that city who get special treatment on Work Visas because it is a region which appears hard to attract locals to work in (goodness only knows why, probably the cost of accommodation). The usual labour market testing that applies to Work Visa applicants everywhere else in New Zealand, has not applied for some years in Queenstown. That city is deemed to be a special immigration zone and is somewhat unique. As a consequence of the Immigration Department effectively dishing out Work Visas to all and sundry in that city, processing times have historically taken from 24 to 48 hours. The disgruntled employers were now complaining they now take at least four weeks (welcome to my world!).

Employers have been asking why it should take so long when restaurants are having to close their doors through lack of staff. The Minister commented that the priority of the Government was putting New Zealanders into work.

And there in lies the truth of all of this.

It is perhaps a little understood fact that the foundation of all Work Visa policy is to 'protect employment opportunities for New Zealanders' and this is the reason why Work Visas can (if you are not using someone like us who knows what they are doing), be very hard to obtain even if you have secured a job.

It is certainly my view that this Government is determined, as it should be, to reduce the numbers of New Zealanders unemployed in the shortest possible time. Unfortunately, migrants to some extent are bearing the brunt of that when there is scant evidence that migrants “take jobs” from locals in the first place. Demonstrably migrants do not compete with locals simply because if locals are available no employer in their right mind would employ them. Who would want to deal with the Immigration Department if they did not have to? There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that employers will always employ a New Zealander first, by preference, and only migrants if they cannot fill the vacancy.

It is therefore extremely difficult to understand why cutting skilled migrant numbers is going to positively impact on the employment of New Zealanders and lower the unemployment rate.

The New Zealand economy certainly has a problem with youth unemployment, i.e. those under the age of 25. Depending on which statistics you believe, the unemployment rate amongst this age group is up to five times that of the general population. For people aged over 25, however (the ones migrants ‘compete’ with, if you might think they do) the unemployment rate is 4.5% and falling fairly quickly. It is accepted wisdom that in New Zealand unemployment rates of 5% or less, rapidly leads to skill shortages and it is quite clear we are seeing that, at least in Auckland if not elsewhere.

The Government is without a doubt signalling to those people who enjoy the unemployment benefit that their days might be a little numbered. The Government is quite determined to get people off their backsides and into work but unfortunately they are guilty of attempting to force New Zealand employers to perhaps employ people who are unprepared, unmotivated, unskilled and very often invisible, i.e. they don’t apply for the jobs in the first place.

Last week we managed to secure a work visa for a Nanny – minimum wage and not a single New Zealander applied for the job. Not one.

The risk for New Zealand then, is that if the migrant markets conclude that an offer of skilled employment offers the only certainty to secure Permanent Residency, many will look to countries where they don’t need to take that (perceived) risk.

The disappointing thing for me is that this is a Government that fully understands that almost every report ever done, anywhere on the planet regarding migrants taking jobs, accepts that to be an absolute fallacy.

Ultimately, I think the Government is simply playing politics. While I am sure they have a heartfelt desire to see more New Zealanders in work, a scaling back of the welfare state (something I am a staunch supporter of) and the fact that we have an election in three months time, means the acid is on them to increase employment. No argument there but in cutting migrant numbers, they are without doubt, barking up the wrong tree.

At a time when net migration to New Zealand has been only 2,900 people in the last 12 months and skill shortages here are going to become acute within 12 months this makes little to no economic sense. But since when has good economics made easy bedfellows with good politics?

The number of people being selected from the pool needs to increase and increase in the not too distant future.

Seminars – South Africa – I am back in SA on 6 September and this might well be my last trip to the Republic for the year. If you have friends or family that might like to attend one of my (apparently witty and informative) evenings tell them to register on our website. They will find it very valuable in terms of making some decisions about whether to apply for PR of NZ or not.

Until next week,

Southern Man - Iain MacLeod