Partnership Visitors Visa - frustration

[sestsix]

Hi all!
With our CO seemingly uncontactable for an update (LIA has been trying for over a week) ...Wondering if anyone can shed some light on where we are "likely" to be at with our PVV application... For all of us on the forum, this process is incredibly stressful and emotionally draining.
Background:
I am a NZ Citizen, my Partner and her 2 children are from Ukraine.
PVV lodged online: 5 Nov 2019
CO: assigned 5 Jan 2020 (surprisingly fast given the backlog!!)

First request for additional Information 9/1/20
• Further evidence of a genuine and stable relationship
• Evidence of your employment and income – in order to assess whether you are a bona fide applicant, we are requesting that you provide evidence of employment, as well as documentation to show how you have been supporting yourself financially.

Provided: updated timeline, added Photos of holidays, added WhatsApp call logs.
My partner has not been working for number of years, she is a stay at home mum (received an inheritance from deceased parents and purchased 2 apartments, has some cash and received a small compulsory child support monthly from ex husband of 6 years)

Second request for additional docs 21 Jan 2020
• Evidence of communication between you and your supporting partner – we note that your relationship was declared to have started in April 2019, after you and your partner began communicating in March 2019. Please provide record of your communications showing the inception of your relationship.
• Evidence of your financial records – you have said to us that you sold your apartment, and also your ex-husband contributes financially to the upbringing of your children. Please provide bank statements to show your financial status.
• Evidence of your marital status – you have said to us that you are divorced, please provide evidence to support this.
• Evidence of your partner’s marital status – we would like to confirm whether your partner has been previously married, and if he has, please provide evidence of his current marital status.

Provided: We did not have specific physical evidence of the very initial inception of our relationship to provide -communication was by way of WhatsApp and this was already supplied (therefore a sworn Stat declaration was supplied supplied covering the exact relationship inception and following genesis).
MArital Status:supplied Divorce certificate and Stat Declaration confirming 18 months separation
Provided bank statements (all docs btw officially translated) Showing sale of apartment (she still owns 1 apartment), showing current balance in account 52K (USD), showing reg monthly contribution from Father of children. Essentially, financial status showed including support from myself.


The only news we got was that our CO had sent the documentation to a Technical advisor. The TE advises he has reviewed and sent his response to the CO. He would not discuss (protocol I guess)

So not5 being able to now contact our CO is becoming a huge frustration- we need to know at least where we are at!
Questions are:
why ref to a Technical Advisor (I have read this is not normal process)
What can we do to be able to communicate with someone?
Does Ukraine perhaps have a high risk profile attached to it
Sorry about the lengthy post! - if any of the more experienced on here can assist it would be very much appreciated
PS: yes. .. I realise it may be the classic "how long is a piece of string "

Thanks to you all !

[JandM]

A Technical Adviser is a senior CO who has discretion to interpret the regulations if some aspect of a person's case is not quite clear-cut, so the CO doubts whether it does or does not meet the criteria. I think it's reasonable that the TA would not tell you about his work on your case, because it might have been on just one aspect, whereas the responsibility for the whole thing remains with the CO, who may still have other parts of it to work on. There is no set order in which a CO has to deal with checking the requirements, so it's not possible to guess, from the information which has been requested, where s/he may have got to.

Everyone here will understand your anxiety and frustration, but I'm afraid that is a normal state for anyone with an application in to INZ. It isn't possible to follow every step of what the CO is doing to process your case - this information just is not available. They DO contact you when there is something to ask, or to tell. If there is silence, it doesn't mean that nothing is happening or that the CO is not working. All COs have a rotating queue of many cases, so when s/he's taken whatever the next step needs to be on yours, your file goes to the back while s/he takes up the next file, then the next, and so on, acting on whatever is 'live' with each case. Any replies or queries about yours would go in your file wherever it is waiting, and s/he won't look at them till it's your file's next turn for attention. Experience shows that COs quite often don't answer if the question comes down to, 'Tell me something,' and there is no actual news at that time, because writing 'empty' emails takes up time which they are meant to use to advance the progress towards issuing people's visas.

[sestsix]

Hi JandM.
Thanks so much for your thoughts and summary - your time and effort appreciated

Knowing what the role of a Technical Advisor entails, makes things a little more comforting. And yes, I can see now how the information / guidance provided by the TA gets fed back into the CO's queue. So I guess patience is virtue.

Regarding our case - we supplied the requested documents - however, thinking about it, it;s perhaps not surprising that the CO then ask for guidance from a TA (stat decs and verification of bank statements to show financial status etc)

Thanks again for the contibution

[EGoodhue]

I would say that it's not acceptable for your CO not to be responding to emails or any other attempts at contact though - it's in an Immigration Officer's performance agreement that they are required to answer emails within 48 hours. I note you've mentioned that you have an LIA - you could request your LIA to contact the CO's manager to intervene and have the CO performing their job in the manner that is expected of them. Your LIA will either have an organisational chart of the branch where your application is or will be able to request one from INZ and find out who the CO's manager is by way of that chart.

[JandM]

I remember you have told us this before, that COs must answer emails promptly, according to the rules. But the experience of generations of forum members is that it doesn't happen routinely - there's a gap between the ideal and reality.

[sestsix]

I would say that it's not acceptable for your CO not to be responding to emails or any other attempts at contact though - it's in an Immigration Officer's performance agreement that they are required to answer emails within 48 hours. I note you've mentioned that you have an LIA - you could request your LIA to contact the CO's manager to intervene and have the CO performing their job in the manner that is expected of them. Your LIA will either have an organisational chart of the branch where your application is or will be able to request one from INZ and find out who the CO's manager is by way of that chart.

Thanks for that advice! My LIA just miraculously managed to contact the Manager (also after a week of trying). He promised we would have some news today .. so we wait with baited breath

[sestsix]

Well the frustration goes on -- despite the manager FINALLY being contacted and a "promise of contact and action from our CO tomorrow"
.... there is still zero contact.
LIA and myself have again emailed and phoned multiple times and nothing but "please leave a message" .. how many messages do you have to leave ??
Worst of all the Manager himself is also seemingly uncontactable and unresponsive to emails and voicemails
Sure, we understand INZ are busy - but its unjust when a request from them for additional information has attached to it, a firm deadline for submission

[JandM]

Sympathies. Many people reading this will know JUST how you feel.

[EGoodhue]

If the Immigration Manager and the Immigration Officer aren't responding to emails or messages, go the next level up in management - to the Visa Operations Manager. I don't believe it's a case of "ideal vs. reality" when staff in an NZ government department aren't adhering to their own employment requirements. Immigration Officers are employed in a customer service-based role and it is a requirement of their job to respond to communications from their customers - it's a significant part of what they are paid to do. Their whole job exists because of the customers - the visa applicants. There is something seriously wrong when a customer service-based organisation is failing to communicate with its customers. When staff aren't held to account for not doing what is a requirement of their job, they will get away with whatever they think they can because that's human nature.

[JandM]

I don't think it's *right*, what they do. I'm just saying that it IS what many of them, over years and years of reported experience here, do.