Hi all,
my husband and I were issued an ITA, which is going to expire on August 18th, for 135 points. We're amongst the lucky ones selected in April.
We were ready with all the documents needed for the submission back at the end of May, but for one thing: my husband's degree assessment by NZQA. We had an NZQA report stating that his degree was comparable to a 7 level + an 8 level degree, but we needed a 7 + a 9 level degree in order to achieve all the 135 points we had declared on the EOI.
Long story short, we applied to NZQA for a review, and we just recieved the amendment to that report, so NZQA now assessed his degree as a 7 + a 9 level one (yay!).
The problem now is that my husband, who is the main applicant, in the meantime has become 40 years old (on June 11th), so now we only have only 130 points again.
We actually wrote an email back at the end of May to our immigration officer, asking whether we could submit the ITA application anyway while we waited for the review of his degree assessment by NZQA (we were fairly certain that they were wrong), but we were told by the officer not to submit the application, because it would have been rejected.
Now, the thing is, we were right ever since the beginning, and because of a mistake by NZQA now we apparently can't submit the ITA application to INZ.
My first reaction now would be to write to the INZ officer and ask if we can submit the application now, since we were ready with everything long before June 11th (and all the documents are dated before June 11th), and none of this was our fault (we really had 135 points!), but I fear that the officer will reject our request anyway, telling us not to submit the ITA application because now we don't have 135 points because of my husband's age.
BUT THIS WOULD BE SO NOT FAIR!
So, what do you suggest? Do we write to the officer and then go for some kind of claim procedure if the officer says no, or do we apply anyway (explaining all the events in the ITA application), and then, when INZ analyzes the application, if they reject it, we start the claim procedure?
Thank you all
Kismet