Nearly 60 percent of one-off residence visa applications by Indians approved

In the history of New Zealand’s immigration, the one-off residence visa programme, which was announced on September 30, 2021, certainly changed the lives of many migrants.

The programme announced by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern led government is expected to provide about 165,000 migrants currently in NZ with the residence class visa.

The processing of the first phase, phase one, began on December 1, last year, for those who had already applied for residence under the Skilled Migrant or Residence from Work categories on or before September 29, 2021, or had submitted a Skilled Migrant Category Expression of Interest, and had included your dependent child in the Expression of Interest aged 17 years or older on September 29, 2021.

The second phase for all other eligible migrants was due to begin in March but recently Immigration NZ announced that from 21 February, they  would open applications early for a group of up to 10,500 individuals who have a Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) Expression of Interest (EOI) in the pool that was submitted on or before 29 September 2021.

Indian Weekender obtained the latest data from INZ regarding the application processing of one-off residence visa since it started on December 1’ 2021.

Nicola Hogg, General Manager Border and Visa Operations says, “Processing applications for the 2021 Resident Visa is a priority for Immigration NZ (INZ). We are committed to deciding the vast majority of these residence applications within 12 months, with some being much faster. Our staff have been working hard to process these applications since the category opened and we are making good progress.”

Since phase one applications opened on 1 December 2021, INZ have received more than 13,000 applications and nearly 6000 have been approved, resulting in more than 12,500 people becoming residents under this new policy. Interestingly, to date INZ has received a further 1502 applications from those eligible since 21 February.

When asked about the data specifically about Indian applicants Hogg said, “As at 22 February 2022, we have received 14,426 applications for the 2021 Resident Visa. Of those applications received, 3805 are for Indian nationals.” This means that nearly 26 percent of applications received by INZ are that of Indians.

“As at 22 February 2022, 7103 applications have been approved for the 2021 Resident Visa. Of those applications approved, 2247 are for Indian nationals.” This means while INZ has approved nearly 50 percent of applications in all; nearly 60 percent of the applications submitted by Indians have been approved.