I believe that most people have heard that INZ is prioritising SMC applications according to whether 1. it is a high renumeration job, 2. needs occupational registration 3. is from accredited employer. This plan has led to a large backlog where non-prioritised applications are deferred a lot. I've heard quite a few that have been waiting from 8 up to 18 months for being allocated a Case Officer or finalising the application. Whereas, the prioritised applications are processed very quickly, lots of them only take 3 to 4 months, even they are submitted few months later than the formers.
A lot of the people around me have the opinion that:
1. It's not fair to prioritise applications by certain conditions, defers other applications. Should be first in first served
2. They suspect the the priority is legitimately / reasonably established, especially considering PM Jacinda said "They did not do that under the authority of Cabinet" to the response of recent complaint of Partnership visa
3. INZ promised to hire and train more employees to speed up visa process earlier this year, but until now, what we see is the indicative timeframe grows up to 13 months from 9 months. We want to know what INZ has done to have NOT achieve their goal.
4. Lots of applicants who have been allocated to Case Officer has also suffer the long waiting time and no response from INZ after phone call and email enquiry. They don't think it's a reasonable period of time.
So here I would like to set up a Google Form to collect your timeline of SMC application, to show how inefficient and unfair the current visa process is, and send it to local media with a letter to request INZ's answering to above questions. You will NOT be required to submit your real name, application number and other private information, just your job title, timeline etc. The result is not visible to anyone except for myself.
We might be ignored because we are not voters yet, but we will be. At least, we have right to give our voice under the democracy of New Zealand, and it may make difference, who knows.
I deeply appreciate if you are willing to share your timeline information. But there are somethings to note:
1. The form is in English and Chinese as I have also post it to local Chinese forum, and currently have collected nearly 90 responses
2. Before submit, please double check the dates are correct and after submission you can save the 'Edit response' link for future editing or updating.
I will also share some statistics in this post, so you are welcome to subscribe.
If administration think this post not appropriate to be in the forum, please feel free to message me.