Using covid to escalate 1 year old SMC application

Hi guys,

I have been lurking in the forum even before moving to NZ (2 years ago) and finally had a good reason to start a post of my own.

As many others, I have been waiting for my SMC residence application to be allocated to a CO for almost a year now.

Luckily, my current company is still doing OK despite the global pandemic, but there's always a risk of getting made redundant in the next couple months in case the revenue starts to decrease.

The problem is that my home country (Brazil) is currently the epicenter of covid in South America, with an average of 1000 covid deaths a day (1.5 million confirmed cases and 60000+ deaths total).

Even though things seem to be OK for the time being, the possibility of having to go back to a country that didn't even try to contain the spread of covid makes me uneasy, especially considering all the time, effort, and money that I have spent towards qualifying and applying for the SMC visa.

With that in mind, I wonder if this would make a strong case towards getting my application escalated and finally allocated to a case officer.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers.

I believe it's always worthwhile to at least make a request - it's free and the worst thing that can happen is they can say 'No'.

Just prepare yourself for a 'No' answer, as they will likely rationalise it that you are able to stay in NZ on temp visas and Residence is just a longer-term option. Give it a go though, nothing to lose.

Just got an email from inz and my request was denied.

Carry on.