Over 3,000 family visitor visa applications in New Zealand have remained unprocessed for around three months as the country’s systems have experienced an upgrade failure.
The most recent data has shown that due to several technology faults that Immigration New Zealand has had in the past year, around 3,200 applications of those who applied for a family visitor visa, more specifically for Parent and Grandparents visitor visas, in August and September have been affected, VisaGuide.World reports.
According to Radio New Zealand (RNZ), a migrant from South Africa said that she was not aware of such problems and only found out this week through social media what had happened.
The migrant got in touch with Immigration New Zealand, and her parents have now obtained a visa. However, RNZ explains she is now concerned if the others will be able to find out about such a problem.
Immigration New Zealand is now fixing the problems as well as granting visitor visas. However, applicants have still been facing inconveniences as flight ticket prices have started to increase now that the winter holidays are approaching.
Commenting on the matter, Arran Hunt, who is an immigration lawyer, said that the fault was with the new online system, which is known as ADEPT.
RNZ explains that Hunt was surprised that it took Immigration New Zealand such a long time to realize the mistake. In addition, he pointed out that the technical issues and other faults have caused many inconveniences for those who applied in August and assumed that they would have their visas ready by November and had booked their flights.
The same source highlighted that system faults began with the launch of the 2021 residence visa. An incident management team was brought in at the end of August to solve the issues and improve the processing capacity.
Applications that have been affected due to the system faults are currently being treated, and the controller, Richard Owen, said that customers are being contacted.
Through an official statement, the government said that the processing times will be 20 or more days for visitor visas, 19-39 days for work visas, 77 days to five months for Permanent Resident visas, and 36 to 44 months for skilled migrant visas.
The government also highlighted that delays are expected to happen due to the increased number of applications that the country has received after reopening its borders.
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