Help please - character waiver ???

[Avalon]

Mea - I have no advise on Character Waivers - but what I can say is this - dont bother asking "general" questions of NZIS. I think you need to be dealing soley with a case officer if you have one - and if not - write to the branch manager of the office you ahev been dealing with.

Explain that they have offered no reason for declining residency (having double checked the letter), and they have not offered you the chance of a Character Waiver or an appeal. If you can - check to see if theres anything in the Operations manual that says they HAVE TO provide these things. This is an area I know nothing about - but if they were supposed to tell you things and they didnt - they are breaching proceedure -and that can make life a bit easier for you in a lot of ways.

Kick up a stick if you have tyo - but dont take this lying down. They have let people in with quite horrendous criminal backgrounds - so a bit of a problem in the past should not deter them. If you can find real details about the above Paedophile case - you may want to consider quoting it - and you may want to look into teh case of Michael Barrymore - who despite a drug record and an (thus far unproven) involvenmt in the death of a young man - both have managed to get NZ residencey. I dont know enough about either case to really help - but there may be something in there that woudl help you out.

Hugs

Hxxx

[wilson182]

Hi Mea

When we were living in England there were big flash adverts in the local paper (Want to Live In New Zealand!! Contact Me.... NO PR NO Fee). We went to see the chap who took great delight in telling us his credentials and how big he was in the immigration side of things..... Then he read my husbands police record!!!! And we were escorted from his office!! (Not really ) To say he was shocked would be an understatement, he told us there was no way in hell would he even consider looking at our case (Honestly, it was just a misspent youth as a "lad on the town", he never did time) So after hearing this from this "expert" we were aprehensive as to our chances of visiting NZ let alone gaining PR. Fast forward a few years, we decided to come on "holiday" I loved the place, the kids loved the place, Hubby was OK. We wanted to live here, so three weeks into the "holiday" OH applied for a job. The following day he got his contract so the next morning he stood in a queue for three hours at the immigration office to apply for his work permit. He sat with a immigration officer, face to face, and was asked to explain his record and her reply was, although she wanted to see the police records it was clear that this was a case of a misspent youth and she could see that now he was a family man. She accepted that on face value, the point is - anything can look bad on a piece of paper until you find out the facts. (Sorry for the waffle - OH has dictated this!!)

Is there no way your OH can approach immigration in the US and put his case forward, or even come over on a visitors visa and try it that way.??

[mea]

Thank you so much for your posts. Everything you're saying is helping me to feel better and giving me hope that we still have a chance. I've been up and down all week, someone suggested character references and I thought that's a great idea (I asked NZIS if that would help and the person I was talking to said they didn't know, which depressed me), the same person referred me to the operations manual where I learned about character waivers, so I've been trying to find out about them now and I can see from your posts, that this isn't the end of the road
I haven't actually had a chance to tell the OH about any of this yet, we haven't talked since he told me his application was declined, he's working full-time, (and I phoned just a little while ago and he's had to work Saturday because he couldn't work one day this week because of the weather), so hopefully I'll get to talk to him tomorrow and tell him about all this. The most frustrating part for him I think is the thought that he can only email them (and he doesn't have access to a pc right now and with working full-time he doesn't have a lot of free time) and it seems that he's done what he thought he needed to and been told no dice and he thinks this is it. So, when I get to tell him all this I'm sure it will cheer him up considerably!!!
Maybe we can discuss him coming over on a visitors visa and we can both go in to NZIS office and talk to someone.

Again, I thank you so much for your posts and if anyone else has anything more to add I'd love to hear it I'd still like to know if there is a way he can apply for a character waiver or if that is only an option if NZIS ask you for information so they can consider it.