Hi all.
I'm new here to this site and have read endless posts regarding people in situations fairly similar to what my partner and I are going through, but still thought I'd go ahead and ask for a bit of advice. Just a warning that this post is going to be quite long as so far it has been quite a messy and complicated process .
I myself am a NZ citizen, born here with Kiwi parents. My partner and I have been together for 1 year and 4 months and my partner is from India and currently applying for an Essential Skills Work Visa through Immigration NZ. He has been in the country for just over 2 years and is now on an Interim Visa while he waits to hear whether he is granted the Essential Skills visa.
My partner first came to New Zealand on a 1 year student visa and did his Post-graduate Diploma in Hospitality Management. After completing his post-grad diploma he was then granted a 1 year open-work visa which has since expired last month, hence why is he now on an interim visa. His current work position is as a Food and Beverage Supervisor working for a local hotel chain. They have been extremely supportive of his visa process and due to circumstances that delayed his initial application, they have said that they are able to wait up to 1 month and will provide additional time if Immigration state that his visa isn't far from being processed.
We had originally paid an Immigration Lawyer to receive immigration advice and handle our case but (unfortunately for us both) the lawyer told us we were entitled to apply for Skilled-Migrant Residency which we then found out was wrong. We were then told by the lawyers that his best option would be to apply for the Essential Skills Visa and although we were very vocal about wanting to apply for my partner's visa quite early, the lawyer insisted that the Hamilton Branch would be very quick and that he wouldn't even need to go on an Interim Visa because it would be done before that happened - his visa was due to expire in 4 weeks. After a lot of what has since turned out to be very bad immigration advice, we have since discontinued services with said Immigration Lawyer, and she was clearly very wrong as since his application was lodged in early July, my partner's application is still in queue and he has now been on an Interim with no work for the last 3 weeks. We have also lodged a complaint with the Law Society after they agreed we had (multiple) grounds to lay a complaint .
It has now been 27 working days (5 weeks and 2 days) since his application was lodged and we are hoping that a decision will be made next week. We are aware that the usual timeframe is 25 - 30 days so hopefully we hear from Immigration soon.
Now the problem is that it is coming up to the 1 month timeframe that my partner's work gave him. Although he is confident he could find another job relatively quickly if he did lose the job, our obvious main concern is that his visa is an Essential Skills Visa which is employer specific. Does that therefore mean that if he did lose his job due to them having to wait while he is unable to work for so long due to his interim, his Essential Skills Visa would then be null and void?
We would both be pretty devastated if he did have to leave the country but have accepted that this is a very real possibility. After all of this process, we are both regretting that we didn't just apply for a partnership visa as we have lived together over a year now and have plenty of evidence showing that we are indeed in a genuine relationship . It's just that we don't have my name on tenancy (although the landlord knows us both very well and knows that we are both staying here together and would happily verify it if need-be) and have never opened a joint bank account as we always just pay for each other and have been happy doing so without needing to open another bank account. If he wasn't granted the Essential Skills visa and did have to leave the country, would we still be able to apply for the Partnership Visa while he's in his country? Or is there a period of time we would need to wait before being eligible to apply for it?
Sorry for all of the questions.
Thank you!!!