Random situation..

[andreaw]

Hi everyone
I'm just posting on behalf of my husband who is pretty fed up with Immigration at the moment.

He moved here with his family when he was 15 in 1986-87. His parents organised his and his sisters residency all those years ago. His sisters and his parents have since received citizenship at various times since then, but he didn't ever feel the need to.

A few years ago he renewed his British passport but they didn't transfer over the residency stamp, which we didn't think was a big deal as he wasn't planning on leaving New Zealand.

We're now planning on visiting Australia next year in April so he started thinking about his residency and wanting to ensure that all was ok with his passport etc he approached immigration to check on his residency status.

They've now informed him that they have no record of his residency since everything was transferred to digital records and that he needs to prove that he was here in 1987, which he probably can't do as he was 15 and didn't (and still doesn't) have a drivers licence. The original residency stamp from his passport is apparently not old enough and isn't enough proof.

He attended high school and university in New Zealand, he's been sick and in hospital in New Zealand, he's received a sickness benefit from the New Zealand government. He's worked his whole adult life here and paid taxes. We are married, we own a house, so we're not sure suddenly why this would be an issue now.

Has anyone else's residency disappeared and what have you done about it? I was just checking the citizenship application and you have to have been a resident already, which probably doesn't apply as he doesn't exist in their database!

Any advice? Anywhere we can go for help?

Thanks
Andrea

[Beachcombers]

Sounds very confusing! You say he has a residency stamp in his old passport? Surely this is proof enough?

[andreaw]

Sounds very confusing! You say he has a residency stamp in his old passport? Surely this is proof enough?

I would have thought that, but apparently it's not old enough. He was just told that today after being told a few weeks ago that he'd just need to fill out some piece of paperwork and provide new photos and he'd be fine.

[zednic20]

definately strange situation your husband is going through. In 1986-87 your husband arrived in NZ on which visa? Also there will be stamps on his old passport which you guys can request from embassy by explaining the complete situation, because once the passport is cancelled & returend against newly issued passport, they keep the old passport under safe vault for their reference. This might help your husband to show old dated stamps as a proof.

[girlwithanewf]

definately strange situation your husband is going through. In 1986-87 your husband arrived in NZ on which visa? Also there will be stamps on his old passport which you guys can request from embassy by explaining the complete situation, because once the passport is cancelled & returend against newly issued passport, they keep the old passport under safe vault for their reference. This might help your husband to show old dated stamps as a proof.

Expired British passports are actually returned to you. Does he have his original passport?

The British passport people wouldn't have transferred the visa sticker (if that's what they had in the old days.) When your passport expires you have to go to NZ immigration and pay to have a new sticker put in your new passport. (that's just for information really)

Sounds like a worrying situation, do any of the authorities mentioned - schools, university, hospital etc have any record of his residence status? I know nowadays you often have to provide proof of residence and show your visa.
Hope it all works out - I sometimes found NZ immigration would give us totally different answers depending on who I spoke to, maybe it is worth approaching them again.

[JandM]

Have you asked your husband's parents if they have paperwork relevant to this?

[andreaw]

Yep he has his old passport. He told me that it's not actually a residency stamp that's in it, it's a temporary travel visa so not sure what that means really.

We're about to start checking everywhere to see what we can find, he enrolled at uni in 1990 so we're hoping he might have something from then.

Given that he's had two different stories the two times he's been in to immigration, I'm quite keen to go in again and get a third opinion . It all seems pretty random and we can't work out why it's suddenly a problem given he's lived his whole adult life here and his residency status has never been an issue!

[andreaw]

Yep about to do that. They've both moved around quite a lot and don't have many old records or photos etc so hopefully one of them might still have something!

[sophiedb]

Very confusing I hope it all works out well in the end!!

[andreaw]

So just an update for those following along..
He managed to get his mum's passport with his details in it. He's taken it and any accompanying proof that he could find along today to Immigration to now be told that now he has to prove that his MUM was a permanent resident (she's now a citizen) as they no longer have any of her records either.
What a mission! What's most frustrating for me is that they lost his records, he didn't lose them! Surely it's their mess to clean up, not his! They're making him run around and prove this and that when it's not even his fault.

So annoying.