3 March 2023
Marié Willemse
[FYI request #21558 email]
DOIA 2223-1484
Dear Marié
Thank you for your email of 13 January 2023 to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
requesting under the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act), the following:
Please can you provide the below information for Permanent resident visa applications applied
for by persons that fall under the Skilled Migrant residency visa category:
1) In table format, please provide the below data fields horizontally:
- Date - starting on 3 January 2023 up to an including date of response.
- Count of Permanent resident visa applications received
- Number of applicants on the application
- Status of the application
- Applications assigned to a case officer
- Applications awaiting fee deduction
- Applications awaiting passport return to applicants
- Finalized applications
- Application outcome - granted
- Application outcome - denied
2) Count of Permanent resident applications, for persons with a Skilled Migrant resident visa, in
flight prior to 3 January 2023, and the current application statuses you have for these
applications.
Our Response
We apologise for the delay in providing this response.
Question one
Applications received and current status
Please refer to the below table for the number of Permanent Resident Visa (PRV) applications (and the
number of applicants represented) received from Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) resident visa holders
between 3 January 2023 and 20 February 2023, broken down by the application’s status, as at 25 February
2023.
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Number of
Number of
Application Status
applications
applicants included
Received
6
10
Allocated to a case officer
38
80
In queue to be allocated to a
68
125
case officer
Application decided
161
294
Total
273
509
Applications awaiting fee deduction
All PRV applications have a fee deducted at the time the application is accepted by Immigration New
Zealand (INZ) for processing. If a fee is not able to be taken, then the application will not be accepted.
As at 20 February 2023, INZ had received 6 PRV applications from SMC visa holders that are yet to be
accepted for processing.
Applications awaiting passport return to applicants
When INZ receives and returns a passport to an applicant, a note is placed on the electronic file in INZ’s
Application Management System (AMS) to record that a passport has been received and subsequently
returned.
To be certain whether any applicants were awaiting the return of their original passports we would need
to check every application manually as this information is not held in an easily reportable format. There
are 273 applications received between 3 January 2023 and 20 February 2023 and all these applications
would need to be manually checked. Therefore, this part of your request is being refused under section
18(f) of the Act as the information requested cannot be made available without substantial collation or
research.
In accordance with section 18(a) of the Act, I have considered whether fixing a charge under section 15
or extending the time limit under section 15(a) would enable the request to be granted but it is my view
it would not. In accordance with section 18(b) of the Act, I have considered whether consulting with you
would remove the reason for refusal, however, in my view it would not as to obtain the specific
information would involve the manual search of paper and AMS applications.
To note, it is not a mandatory requirement for an applicant to provide their physical passport when
lodging a PRV application. However, if they are provided passports are scanned and returned when
applications are lodged by the support officers.
Finalised applications
Please see the below table for a breakdown of decisions made on PRV applications received from SMC
resident visa holders between 3 January 2023 and 20 February 2023.
Number of
Number of
Decision on applications
applications
applicants included
Approved
160
293
Declined
1
1
Total
161
294
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Question Two
There are 23 PRV applications, representing 51 people, received before 3 January 2023 that are currently
in progress as at 25 February 2023. This includes applications that have been allocated to a immigration
officer or are in a queue awaiting allocation to a immigration officer.
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of this decision. Information
about how to make a complaint is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or freephone 0800 802
602.
If you wish to discuss any aspect of your request or this response, or if you require any further assistance,
please contac
t [email address]
Yours sincerely
Michael Carley
Acting General Manager, Border and Visa Operations
Immigration New Zealand
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