Despite split levels enabling immigration officers in Wellington to return to their offices, Auckland’s lockdown has meant many onshore residency applications have been delayed by at least seven weeks.

Prior to the Alert Level 4 lockdown in August there was a backlog of 11,541 onshore paper-based residence applications that were yet to be processed.?

Migrant worker?Thao Joy, who had spent 20 months waiting in the residency queue, said she was concerned about her application facing further delays as immigration staff were unable to process residency applications during the Level 4 lockdown.

In July, Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi cancelled and refunded 50,000 offshore applications, a decision that has brought on legal action from an Auckland man who was hoping to be reunited with his Chinese partner.

INZ border and visa operations general manager Nicola Hogg said since last Monday, when the rest of the country moved to Alert Level 2, a number of staff outside the Auckland region were able to access and process some paper-based applications and work from immigration’s offices.

However, she said skilled migrant category visas and residence from work visas were processed at its Auckland offices.?

※These applications are all paper-based and stored in the office that processes these applications. Unfortunately, this means we are unable to process these applications while Auckland remains at Alert Level 4,§ Hogg said.

※We acknowledge the impact and uncertainty this will have on applicants who are waiting for their skilled migrant category visas or residence from work visas application to be processed.?

※However, while we are unable to process these residence applications, we are focused on processing temporary applications as quickly as possible as this ensures these people are able to remain lawfully in New Zealand.§

Auckland moved down to Alert Level 3 on Tuesday night for two weeks.

Hogg said from this week a small number of visa processing staff in Auckland would be in the offices receiving and processing some priority paper-based applications, including temporary visa application categories and skilled residence applications.

※INZ is following the guidance and settings align with guidance from the Ministry of Health and the Public Service Commission, which means only a limited number of people are working from our offices, during both Alert Level 2 and 3.§

To work through the large backlog of applications, officials have been processing residency applications under priority and non-priority categories.?

Priority applicants are those who earn more than twice the median wage - $54 an hour or $112,320 a year - or work in an occupation where registration is required.

The residence application wait for priority applicants was two weeks, but more than a year for non-priority applicants, with officials currently processing applications from November 2019.

There was also criticism that the number of applications being processed and allocated was decreasing since June.?

In May there were close to 200 non-priority cases being allocated every week to officers. In the week of June 21, the highest number of cases were allocated to officers - 271. But since then, weekly allocations dropped to two digits, dropping to 14 in July, the lowest allocation since April when just four applications were allocated to an officer in a week.