June 15 2019 INL_Digital_Edition

06
JUNE 15, 2019
Educationlink
Immigration New Zealand comes under attack for tardiness
Gill Bonnett
Immigration New Zealand (INZ) is under fire from students
and education providers who say they are paying a heavy
cost for a poor planning of its restructure and forecast visa
numbers.
Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said delays in visa
processing were the number one thing people contacted him
about.
The international education industry said missed enrolments
were causing multimillion dollar losses and damaging New
Zealand’s reputation.
Unprocessed Visa applications
More than 7500 student visa applications are yet to be
processed and of those, about 1500 students have been waiting
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Picture from The International Student Wellbeing Strategy 2017
since February or before.
One master’s degree student
received his visa yesterday, having
applied mid-December for a course that
started in February.
He will now join his course in July.
The International Students’ Association
President Lukas Kristen said the
problem was affecting students and
their partners.
“Immigration New Zealand is just
taking a very long time to process
applications, which leads to students
either missing out on their courses, or it
leads to students being separated from
their partners and potentially family.”
Too late, too bad
Clare Bradley, Chief Executive, Aspire2
International, a private education
and training provider, said that while
some students would join a later intake,
others went to Canada and Australia.
Ms Bradley is on the board of Independent
Tertiary Education (ITENZ).
She said that even if visas were now
approved, fees of late-arriving students
would never be recouped.
She said that the industry had
suffered multi-million-dollar losses
and the cost would be significant for
universities, too.
Polytechnics and Institutes of
Technology were being hit hard, at a
time when they were already under
considerable financial strain, she said.
Trust in New Zealand lost
Trust in New Zealand among agents
and students was damaged and the
industry was having to redouble efforts
to promote itself.
Mr Lees-Galloway said that the
restructure caused short-term delays
but would hopefully lead to quicker
processing times, and higher-quality,
more consistent decisions in the
long-term. The question of whether
more staff should have been recruited
last year was a question for INZ, which
was doing everything it could to make
the changes run smoothly but was also
scrutinising applications more than it
used to.
“That’s why Ihave indicated to INZ
that I want them to keep me closely
informed about how things are going and what they are
doing,” he said.
Education institutes had been making their views
known about the delays, he said.
“I have certainly heard a lot from education industry
but by the same token, the education industry needs to
recognize that as a government, we have a view that they
need to move from volume to value.
“There have been unintended consequences of the
education system being used as a backdoor to residency.
And so, Immigration New Zealand is rightly tightening up
its processes.”
Assessment and Verification
INZ Visa Services Manager Michael Carley said it had
seen an increase in applications which needed greater
assessment and verification.
Applications from India between November and
February increased by 42%.
INZ said that the primary reasons for that rise were
thought to be last year’s post-study work visa changes and
the decision not to review in-study work rights.
The Ministry was seeking reasons why some student
visa applications were taking longer to finalise, Mr Carley
said.
“INZ appreciates that the increased processing time
is impacting some education providers and we have
received feedback from some providers regarding their
concerns about longer processing times. INZ has also
undergone a large change programme over the last 18
months, which has seen the consolidation of visa processing
by type,” he said.
International education contributes more than $5
billion to the New Zealand economy and is the country’s
fourth largest export earner, supporting almost 50,000
jobs.
First-time student visas are down 7% in the year to May
compared to the previous year. Enrolment numbers are
not yet available.
Gill Bonnett is a Reporter at Radio New Zealand. The
above Report has been published under a Special
Arrangement with www.rnz.co.nz
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