ESV to Talent Visa - new employer

[genegeney]

Hi all,

I'll be applying for a Talent visa, under the accredited employer scheme, shortly. I'm currently on an ESV and my new role is different and so no variation of conditions would be possible. Given that everything for the new application should be really straight-forward, in terms of medical and police checks etc., do you anticipate a quick turnaround during the COVID situation?

Cheers,

Gene

[JandM]

Nobody can say. The NZ government is only just beginning the process of picking up the pieces as far as immigration is concerned as the pandemic emergency winds down. Many INZ offices are not yet fully manned.

[EGoodhue]

Hi all,

I'll be applying for a Talent visa, under the accredited employer scheme, shortly. I'm currently on an ESV and my new role is different and so no variation of conditions would be possible. Given that everything for the new application should be really straight-forward, in terms of medical and police checks etc., do you anticipate a quick turnaround during the COVID situation?

Cheers,

Gene

No, I wouldn't anticipate a quick turnaround from INZ for any processing for quite a few months. Pre-Covid, Talent (Accredited Employer) work visa applications were taking up to 4 months to process - that timeframe is likely to get longer in the months to come. Only 50% of staff will be permitted to return to the office at Alert Level 2, so processing capacity will be much lower than normal operations.

[genegeney]

No, I wouldn't anticipate a quick turnaround from INZ for any processing for quite a few months. Pre-Covid, Talent (Accredited Employer) work visa applications were taking up to 4 months to process - that timeframe is likely to get longer in the months to come. Only 50% of staff will be permitted to return to the office at Alert Level 2, so processing capacity will be much lower than normal operations.

Hi Erin,

Given that a Talent visa looks, at least to me, to be a much simpler process for INZ (no employer or labour market checks), why do these take longer than Essential Skills Visas to process please?

[EGoodhue]

Hi Erin,

Given that a Talent visa looks, at least to me, to be a much simpler process for INZ (no employer or labour market checks), why do these take longer than Essential Skills Visas to process please?

Great question...and I really don't know the answer, sorry! Could be to do with demand for the visa category and staffing levels in relation to that demand. Essential Skills application volumes outweigh Talent applications, so perhaps it's just a case of a smaller (more inefficient?!) team processing the Talent applications.

[Kelerei]

There's no reason, in my opinion, for a Talent (Accredited Employer) Work Visa to take 4 months; there's far less verification required compared with, say, Essential Skills.

My own one took a mere 9 days -- and this is as recently as November 2018.