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Thread: Travelling with two passports - Complicated situation

  1. #1
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    Aug 2016
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    Default Travelling with two passports - Complicated situation

    Hi Guys

    My partner currently has a valid NZ residency visa and is visiting her home country. While she was there she applied for a new passport, because although her current passport is valid for another year there is no embassy here in NZ (or anywhere else) so it is probably relatively difficult to get a new passport from NZ.
    When she applied for the passport she asked that they not cancel her old passport as she needed it to get back to NZ, however there must have been some confusion and they did end up punching a hole through the old passport with her residency visa in it.

    I found out about this today and her flight is on Saturday. I immediately got on the phone with INZ and she has submitted a form for the transfer of visa to an eVisa for her new passport, however it seems like it is unlikely it will go through within 24 hours. INZ can't even mark it as urgent as it hasn't entered their system yet.

    So it sounds like she may be able to board the plane on Saturday based on what the airline said, but what is likely to happen when she arrives in NZ? INZ suggests that she could present at the border with both her old passport with the visa and new passport but it would be up to the Customs Officer as to whether they might accept her into the country.

    Has anyone ever been in this situation? What is the most likely outcome when she gets to the border? And what would happen if they don't accept her and turn her back? Would we have to book urgent (expensive) flights out of the country, and/or will this affect her ability to get visas for NZ or other countries in the future?

    Our other option would obviously be to cancel the flight booked for Saturday and re-book for in a couple of weeks, however that will cost about $12-1300 for the new flights and she is going to miss a wedding we are meant to be attending and she will be late starting a job she has lined up on her return.

  2. #2
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    No one!?

    It looks like she is gonna try to travel tomorrow and see what happens. My main concern is that she will be denied entry and then this will cause her major difficulty getting visas in the future when we are travelling, even once she has NZ citizenship.

  3. #3
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    I'm sorry to hear about her difficulty. There isn't a quick and easy answer to give you. What follows is just my thoughts as a lay person - nothing official.

    Quite honestly, I'd be surprised if she is allowed to board the plane if the eVisa hasn't come through. It is now many years since the rules were changed which allowed anyone to travel on a new passport, but with the visa in an old one. However much someone from the airline may have sympathized on the phone, recognizing the particular circumstances, when it comes to passing the check-in clerk, I think that person will follow the guidelines regardless, not wanting to do anything unusual. If an airline lets someone onto a flight whose papers are not in order, they get a heavy fine.

    However, IF she gets aboard and then arrives in NZ, she will probably get taken aside for a private interview at the airport, when the officials will go into all the details of what has happened and why. It is to be hoped that, by that time, her application to get the eVisa attached to her new passport may show up in the system, in which case her honest attempt to do the right thing will be demonstrated.

    Good luck.

  4. #4
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    Is she travelling on a passport from a visa waiver country? If so, it may be possible for her to enter the country with proof of onward travel. A cheap ticket to Australia would suffice. There are also onward ticket services that let you book a ticket for the time you need to show onward travel, then cancel it.

  5. #5
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    Unfortunately no, she is travelling from Kiribati, they have no visa waiver agreement with NZ.

    Thanks for the replies. What actually happened already is that she was meant to fly out on Thursday but the flight was cancelled. The Kiribati immigration and airline had already said she would be fine with her passport situation and she was ready to board the plane when it was cancelled due to bad weather stopping the incoming flight. So I'm thinking she will be able to board on Saturday. She then has a short transit in Nadi, Fiji.

    I hope you are right JandM and they will see she has done everything she can and grant her entry. Do you know what the case is if she is denied entry?

  6. #6
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    Wellington
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    I will say just go and bring any possible evidence she has to explain it in the border if the customs have concerns, I think it will be a special case as her country doesn't have an embassy in NZ and therefore she needs to go back to extend the passport.

    And lately, it's also INZ fault that they work super slow. Last time for me to just transfer a e-visa to a new passport took 21 days and I believe it's not a more than 5 mins job to just update the number on their "online system"
    Last edited by cakes88; 29th March 2019 at 03:06 PM.

  7. #7
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    Thanks for the reply

    I'm tending to agree that it is very unlikely they will turn her away. But the consequences if they do are pretty serious. For the rest of her life on every visa application for any country she would have to declare that she has been denied entry to a country in the past.

  8. #8
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    Do you know what the case is if she is denied entry?
    No, I don't know how they work it if someone is turned back at the border. On the TV documentary Border Security, in such cases they just say, 'S/He was put on the next flight out,' but with no details of how it's done.

    I can understand your concern about possible future visa applications, but if there IS something like this in a person's past, they DO get the chance to explain the circumstances, so your partner would be able to say this was down to a paperwork blunder, not a crime on her part.

    One more thing - it can happen that the authorities are kind. https://www.enz.org/forum/showthread...009#post510009 It's just that you can't necessarily rely on it. This is a tense time for you. Let us know what happens, please, and good luck.

  9. #9
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    Thanks for the help guys. They let her through with no problems. She didn't even get taken off to the interview room.

  10. #10
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    Oh, thank goodness for that!

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