Hi all,
What do you think about it? Share your feelings. Fresh news
https://www.immigration.govt.nz/abou...-notifications
Hi all,
What do you think about it? Share your feelings. Fresh news
https://www.immigration.govt.nz/abou...-notifications
On one hand I'm disappointed that this is the first time INZ have made information about the priority allocation criteria public, even though they've been using it for over 6 months.
But on the other hand, I'm encouraged by the fact that they claim they will now be able to resume allocations from the general queue.
I'm not sure what has changed to give them the capacity to resume allocations that hasn't already been available for the past few months, but I guess we should give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise....
Seems they've been busy with processing all those residence from work talent visas as priority over SMC, so the plan they now have is to shove those in the queue with SMC applicants meaning theres now only one queue to take from for all those non registered low earners. Seeing as they are likely largely on top of those visas as they've been bothering to handle that pile of shame it basically means they won't be touching any residence from work visas for 15 months. They've just moved the ignore pile to another visa category that will merge in with SMC when they eventually get to them.
So good news for SMC applicants, terrible news for RFW applicants.
Apologies for taking the conversation away from the SMC and RFW visas, but does anyone have any idea what implications (if any) this will have for those applying for partnership visas? Do INZ have entirely different teams for work-based and family-based visas? Is there any crossover?
The notification makes no mention of family-based visas, so I assumed that it would have no effect on them. However, I then thought that it would be foolish to take such things for granted considering INZ's current situation...
After more that 13 months of waiting I am cynical at this news and am taking with a bucket load of salt.
What I understood is - INZ has dumped a bunch of priority queue folks to the normal SMC queue like so:
smc-1.jpg
This would also mean additional delays for noraml SMC queue folks.
I've read it the other way round, the red arrow pushes SMC up and hides what was in the priority queue at the bottom of the SMC queue that going forward will just be all residency applications that aren't high earners or registered occupations. So the SMC should begin to move at the expense of the talent visas being delayed. Essentially as they are on top of those any new talent residency applications likely won't be getting anywhere until the middle of 2021 compared to those that applied in December that were being looked at in 2 months.
The partnership queue is handled by a different team, in a different location (Hamilton). The queue for partnership hasn't stopped. It may have slowed a bit, but over the past year, people on this forum have received CO's and approvals for partnership residence – whereas SMC stopped completely for people who didn't meet the internal criteria. Partnership should be unaffected by any changes to SMC.