MP appealing Immigration decision

[Snos]

So back in January my husband and I had our residency visa declined. In March we had a meeting with our local MP who strongly agreed that we had a very good case for appeal and wrote to the Minister of Immigration to overturn the decision. We were told to expect this to take 3-4 months. It got to September (6 months) and we were told the Minister had written a letter with some concerns, and that was the reason for delays. After the elections a new Minister was brought in, and we have been told all work the previous Minister did has been 'wiped' and the new Minister will look at our case from a fresh perspective. So it has now been 8 months and we are no closer to having a decision than we were in March. Neither of us have been able to work since Feb/Mar on our visas so it's getting really stressful to be kept waiting this long.

Has anybody else had any experience in this kind of process?

Thank you

Sarah

[JandM]

So sorry to hear of the situation you're in.

[Otaku]

Sorry to hear about your situation. This blog post might be of interest - http://blog.laurentlaw.co.nz/2014/10...-the-minister/

[ChrisMwn]

yep that's government, and particularly at an election time. You may have been better appealing to the IPT, where some decisions are currently taking 8-10 months. It would be unusual for a Mnister to consider an SMC case that hadn't gone to the IPT for a recommendation.

[Snos]

Thank you for your replies. We were initially going to appeal via a court tribunal but following advice from an immigration consultant, told these can take up to 2 years, so we had to weigh up our options, and considering we couldn't work, we couldn't afford $700+ to lodge an appeal and/or $700+ for an immigration lawyer plus support ourselves financially for the duration of the appeal.

Obviously our case is a little complex, but in a nutshell we do not qualify for any work visas, which is the whole reason we applied for residency in the first case, and our application was based on our specific jobs. Because when we met with the MP we were advised that the majority of the cases had a 3-4 month turn around, and there are no fees, we decided this was the best option for us at the time.

Our only other option would have been to find a job with an employer who can employ people from overseas and applied for a work visa with them, and obviously we would have both needed one, or one of us on a partner visa, but this would mean starting a whole new residence application from scratch. So essentially that would be going back to square one rather than appealing, and we just didn't have the time or finances to do that without flying back to the UK (where we would be homeless and jobless).

There has been no point through this appeal where we have been told 'sorry there is going to be another 3 month delay' it has always been a 'could be any time now' or 'we are hoping for an answer by the end of this month' so we've just kept hanging on.