Visas Predictions and Covid-19

[Pereira86]

Hi everyone,

I was reading this page about visa predictions during the Covid-19 spread: https://www.vidafeliz.co.nz/covid-19...-visa-holders/

The author said some interesting things about visas and some I have my doubts like increasing the SMC points from 160 to 180.

After reading the article what do you think? How is your feeling? Is it the best moment to apply for resident visa?

[JandM]

Well, like he says at the start of the article, he's trying to read the future, looking into his crystal ball, so there are no guarantees that his guesswork will turn out to be correct. Looking to see who wrote this (the Quem somos link), I see that the man is an LIA, so he has some background knowledge on which to base his predictions.

My thought on the situation if INZ potentially raising the eligibility points for SMC is that if you've got your application in before it happens, your case will be processed according to the rules in place at the time of submission.

[Tariq Shahzad]

Points here have become almost a non issue. The real issue is of the business sustainability. I am afraid, all the business experts are saying one thing, it’s gonna cause the biggest economic recession in of the century. Majority of the medium and small scale businesses will cease to exist or will go bank corrupt. Millions of the employees will lose their jobs.... it’s so frightening and horrible. I guess, govt might come up with altogether a different formula to assess the SMC eligibility—- just a thought

[JandM]

The business experts are ALSO trying to read the future, and again, there are no guarantees that they're going to be right. It may be that the NZ government will reinvent everything to help life pick up again when the emergency passes. In the UK where I live, if, six weeks ago, somebody had predicted that the government (strongly conservative, in normal times won't help anyone if they can avoid it, "there is no magic money tree") would shortly nationalize large parts of the railways, be paying employees 80% of their salaries, be financially propping up businesses and ordering the banks to do the same, be waiving planning permission when people see a way they can change their normal operation to help out (e.g.restaurants into takeaways, private school labs into manufacturing protective equipment), it would have been seen as a wild fantasy disaster movie scenario. But all those things, and more, are happening.