Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.
OPINION: How easy is it to lie and cheat your way into New Zealand?
It’s easy, according to Ahmed*, who came here from India on a visitor visa late last year and is now illegally overstaying in New Zealand.
Ahmed told me he paid the equivalent of nearly $5000 to a ‘travel agent’ in India to lodge his visitor visa application to Immigration New Zealand (INZ).
Ahmed’s application included the following false documents created by his travel agent:
Did INZ check whether any of Ahmed’s documents were real before approving his visitor visa?
No.
Because INZ checks less than one in 100 visitor visa applications to New Zealand, and Ahmed’s wasn’t one of them.
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Ahmed’s faked Indian documents looked real to some immigration officer sitting in New Zealand who has never been to India.
Ahmed also showed visas (real ones) for the United States and the UK. His US visa didn’t show that he had stayed illegally in the US for six years, and INZ didn’t find out. Ahmed also didn’t declare four visa refusals by Canadian Immigration.
INZ told me last week that it has decided 282,890 visitor visa applications since the New Zealand border reopened fully in July 2022 after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Of these applications, only 2400 verification checks were undertaken – that’s less than one check in every 100 applications.
Why so few? It’s because INZ has changed its ‘service delivery model’.
Until about five years ago, INZ operated huge offices in countries such as India and China.
For example, about 200 staff worked in INZ Beijing, almost all locally-engaged Chinese. Their job was to verify visitor visa applications – call employers, check whether the visa applicant worked there and was expected back after a tourist trip to New Zealand.
If the applicant was going to New Zealand for a genuine purpose and had reasons to return home afterwards – immigration officers in INZ Beijing would approve the application.
Most of those staff have been made redundant. There are now only 20 staff in Beijing who check visa applications on behalf of staff in New Zealand, who need to make a formal verification request.
INZ staff in New Zealand now decide almost all visa applications, and few of them speak Mandarin Chinese, Hindi or Punjabi or Arabic. They can’t just pick up the phone to call an employer to ask whether this visa applicant to New Zealand is genuine.
So they don’t.
Not anymore. Newshub reported in December 2022 that INZ allowed its staff to do a “quick scan of documents” on visitor visa applications to ensure they were in order. The Minister of Immigration, Hon Michael Wood, said that INZ was still checking applicants’ health and character.
But for most visitor visa applications, no evidence of health or character is required, so no checks are made.
INZ did – eventually – check Ahmed’s bank statements and tax records – AFTER he had arrived in New Zealand and was applying for a student visa (he didn’t take the tour that his travel agent had booked for him).
So, AFTER approving Ahmed a visa and letting him into New Zealand, INZ decided to verify some of his documents.
INZ then found that his bank statements and tax records were false. INZ still didn’t find out about his four fake employment documents because they still didn’t check.
It was too late, of course. Ahmed is unlawfully in New Zealand now. He will certainly work illegally in New Zealand for cash until INZ Compliance eventually catches up with him.
I like to give INZ the last word. INZ’s General Manager, Richard Owen, told me this:
“Immigration New Zealand (INZ) announced changes to its service delivery model in December 2017 designed to ensure faster, more accurate and consistent visa decision-making. We also consolidated visa processing to fewer, strategically chosen sites.”
“An enhanced risk and verification presence has been a critical part of the new service delivery model,” Owen said.
Enhanced verification? You be the judge.
* Not his real name.
DISCLAIMER: This article does not constitute immigration advice. Individuals need to seek personal advice from a New Zealand licensed immigration adviser or lawyer to assess their unique situation. Ankur can be contacted at info@visamatters.co.nz.
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info@visamatters.co.nz