After keeping migrants in limbo for years, immigration cleared 6000 applications for the 2021 Resident Visa - but many hundreds more got jammed up in the online system

Aucklander Jason Warwick,?from South Africa, says years of living in limbo meant many migrants like him woke up early and some stayed up all night to submit their residency applications on December 1.

Warwick says he wanted to apply first thing because he thought it would take months for Immigration NZ to process and then approve.?

Although the process had been streamlined, with Immigration NZ significantly reducing the amount of documentation needed, Warwick says what should have been a 10 minute application took almost two hours to get through.?

※Each section took like three minutes to load.§

But to his surprise, Warwick’s permanent residency application was processed and approved within 24 hours of submission.

※I was so anxious about applying for residency because there were so many documents. I just wanted to get my application through so I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

※When I posted that I got my residency on the Facebook page people thought I was lying. I mean, I was also shocked that it got approved so fast, but people didn’t believe me until I posted a screenshot,§ he says.

Warwick got lucky.?Hundreds more applications kicked out of the online portal because Immigration NZ’s system couldn’t handle the influx of applications.?

Migrant Workers Association president Anu Kaloti hopes Immigration NZ uses this as an example to improve its system’s capacity for the March intake - where the group eligible will be 10 times larger than that for the first round.

※They didn’t do proper consultation,§ she says. ※Had they done that a lot of these issues would have been smoothed out.§

Kaloti asked Immigration NZ to consider staggering the application process by prioritising those whose visas were due to expire first.?

But Immigration NZ general manager Geoff Scott ruled out staggering applications for the next opening in March.

Scott says the system has not crashed; it ※has just been operating slower than expected§.

※We regret that there were some initial difficulties accessing immigration online and apologise for any frustration resulting,§ Scott says.?

※Immigration NZ has seen approximately 6,000 applications successfully coming through the system, which in just two days is more than one third of the expected number of applications.§

He says about 100 immigration officers have been working on processing the applications.?

To cope with the sudden spike in demand, Immigration NZ provided an alternative form for? licensed immigration advisers to free up capacity on the primary online form.?

But it made this form publicly available for customers experiencing issues on the primary form.

※We encourage applicants to use the immigration online form in the first instance. It does not matter which form is used. Once submitted, Immigration NZ will process all applications in the same way,§ Scott says.