Case Officers start working from home from next week?

[junlong]

A friend got a phone call from his CO to do an interview and told him INZ starts working from home next week and is not going to touch any unallocated applications. Has anyone else heard of this news? If it's true, that's horrible...

[Nzs]

All Large Organisations will have a BCP (Business continuity plan)

Modern BCP's have a work from home element to them if possible

It's possible that they are beginning to implement their one, similar to what vodafone did earlier. It wouldn't be surprising given the large number of people who work for them and the huge variety of people their staff interact with

At this time, health and safety are probably at the top of everyone's mind and INZ has to look after it's staff.

These are extraordinary times

[deverett]

Based on something I believe egoodhue posted elsewhere, INZ officials aren't supposed to remove information from INZ premises as this is a huge privacy breach. I don't see how they can work from home without the information.

There's a skim chance that working visas and inline applications might get looked at but postal residency applications will not be touched as they have no digital file to continue working on.

I don't know the state of INZ though, I work for a company deemed an essential service and there's a responsibility for us to keep going through this. I would imagine INZ would be deemed fairly essential and as there's no mandated lockdown they wouldn't be forcing staff to work from home just yet.

[MagicPizza]

I would imagine most businesses will have to move to a work from home model by the end of next week. We have the first cases that have had no contact with people who have travelled. The gov said today "work from home where possible". These are unprecedented times. They will hopefully halt visas where they can't work to make decisions – but that could be a few weeks away yet.

[ericlong]

i want to ask if my case in SPC, are they able to process spc cases at home?

[JandM]

i want to ask if my case in SPC, are they able to process spc cases at home?

We don't know. There are no normal regulations to cover the present situation, and nobody knows what may (or may not) be changed, until the NZ government lets everyone know what they have decided.

[deverett]

The main question I suppose is are INZ deemed an essential service? If they are they are required to keep going as much as they can throughout this situation, but obviously privacy and the wellbeing of the staff trumps visa applications. If they aren't deemed essential they may shut up shop.

My guess would be they are essential however most efforts will be geared to the borders and visa renewals and variations for those stuck on or off shore. This is completely unprecedented though, and we all know INZ don't always adopt logical processes, so it's really hard to know exactly what they are doing and what changes may be made in the situation going forward.

[EGoodhue]

I would be surprised to see Immigration Officers working on visa applications from home - but nothing is impossible. INZ have not made any announcements yet re: how the lockdown is going to affect visa processing, but I expect they will announce something within the next 24-48 hours. It seems that only INZ's border operations (at the airports) are deemed essential services, as per the list that appears on the Covid-19 website.