The new Immigration Minister, Michael Wood, will do a great service to both – the migrant communities and New Zealand by fixing the “living together” mess within the partnership visa – a mess that is largely created under the previous term of this Labour government.
That there is a mess within NZ’s immigration rules for partnership visas is beyond any doubt and best depicted on numerous rejection letters sent by immigration officers where it acknowledges that “a relationship exists” yet it is not considered a “partnership” for a partnership visa as per immigration instructions.
Ideally, once an immigration officer is convinced beyond any doubt that a conjugal relationship exists between the two individuals, then there should not be any constraint preventing them from issuing an entry visa.
However, if the immigration officers are constrained by the immigration instructions to deny entry to individuals whose relationship with a New Zealand-based person is proven beyond any doubt, then the obvious question arises about the nature of immigration instructions received by the department.
This is the question being raised consistently by different key stakeholders, including this newspaper, which has been leading the advocacy for the complete abrogation of the “living together” requirement for partnership visa, purely because it does not reflect the modern multicultural New Zealand that we have become in the last two or three decades.
“Living together” before a ritualistic conjugal union is not an option in many cultures.
Therefore, NZ’s current immigration rules for partnership visa places an unrealistic and unfair requirement on many individuals to produce evidence of “living together” to be allowed entry into NZ and a union with their respective partners.
NZ’s well-intentioned immigration officers do understand the messy situation where even after being convinced that a relationship exists are not able to issue a partnership visa.
Over the years, an ad hoc system has emerged where immigration case officers were issuing an “exception” and granting a “General Visitor Visa (GVV)” based on relationships on a case-by-case basis and allowing people to enter the country and live together with their partners and meet the conditions of Partnership Visitor Visa (PVV) or Partnership Work Visa (PWV).
However, that system was disturbed in mid-2019 when Immigration NZ’s then Mumbai office arbitrarily decided to stop giving “exceptions” whereby refusing to consider applicants as couples for visa purposes despite having social and cultural approval of the same.
Clearly, it smacked arrogance by NZ’s immigration rules to not consider the otherwise genuinely socially and culturally approved couples as a partner for the visa purpose.
Following a community outrage and persistent media attention, the previous Immigration Ministers have made some cosmetic changes in the partnership visa system.
One of the measures then introduced was to expand the ambit of Culturally Arranged Marriage (CAM) visas which allowed people to come to NZ after getting married overseas (with NZ’s citizens and residents).
However, despite the government’s boisterous claims, entry under a Culturally Arranged Marriage visa remains minuscule as a significant majority of people fail to fall within the highly restrictive definition of culturally arranged marriages.
In the absence of direction and empathy from previous immigration ministers on this pressing issue affecting largely the migrant communities, the partnership visa system has gradually slipped back to the old ad hoc system where immigration officers arbitrarily approve entry via an exception and issue General Visitor Visa.
Yet there is no accountability when an immigration officer chooses to grant an exception and issue a general Visitor Visa (GVV) and when they outrightly decline a partnership visa application despite being convinced that a relationship exists.
The new Immigration Minister, Michael Wood, can fix this anomaly once and for all.
With a stroke of a pen, the minister can issue an immigration instruction that can remove the culturally inappropriate requirement of “living together” for the purpose of a partnership visa.
And this would not compromise NZ’s immigration system in any manner as the immigration officers are anyway acknowledging that a genuine socially approved relationship exists.
It’s only that NZ’s immigration rules are less reflective of cultural diversity and demand a one-size-fits-all outcome.
It is widely assumed and accepted that Minister Wood is deeply empathetic and considerate towards the ethnic migrant minority communities and hopefully aware of the cultural diversity in defining a conjugal relationship.
It’s time for Minister Wood to shine as the new Minister of Immigration and remove a bottleneck that is affecting both – brand-NZ and the migrant communities adversely.
If it makes it easier and politically more palatable, all political parties, including the National Party, Green Party and Act Party, have officially said that there was no need for a law change, and instead, the Minister of Immigration can issue an instruction to fix this living together mess in NZ’s partnership visa system.