Thanks to a high court decision, INZ are once again resuming the processing of offshore residence visa applications. As a result of border restrictions imposed last year as a result of COVID-19, most offshore visa applications were put on hold by Immigration New Zealand. The reasoning behind this was because people were not able to travel to New Zealand because of border restrictions, there was no point in processing the applications.
Fortunately the New Zealand courts have taken a different view on this circumstance and instructed INZ to continue processing pending residency applications from offshore applicants. The Court found that when the applications were lodged there was no provision in the immigration instructions allowing for these applications to be paused as a result of border restrictions. Therefore, they have found that INZ need to uphold the instructions that were in place at the time of submission.
This is great news for the 2,300 applications that were submitted from offshore prior to the border closure. While INZ have not given any timelines, they have announced that they are actively working on the applications and they are being processed in the order they were received. The good news is that the court order also covers more than 4,000 resident visas holders who were offshore and could not ravel as a result of the border closures. This means that they can now travel to New Zealand as long as they meet COVID-19 and MIQ protocols.
While this may seem too little too late we certainly believe this is the beginning of relaxation around the border restrictions and signifies that INZ are preparing to start approving visa applications once more. The immediate focus has clearly been the 2021 Resident Visa but we expect that once the phase 2 applications have kicked off INZ will look to resume standard visa application protocols once more.
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