Around 54% of Indian nationals’ visitor visa applications approved since July 31

“Since the borders fully re-opened to visitors on July 31' 2022, Indian nationals have
submitted over 24,000 visitor visa applications. Of these, around 13,000 have been
approved as of October 31 2022, with the remaining applications still in progress,”
Nicola Hogg, General Manager, Border and Visa Operations, said.

Hogg was responding to a query from the Indian Weekender.
This means around 54 per cent of visitor visa applications by Indian nationals
have been approved according to the latest data.
On July 31' 2022, New Zealand finally had the final stage of its structured
re-opening of the visitor visa category. It was after a series of lockdowns and travel
restrictions for over two years owing to the global Covid-19 pandemic NZ finally
phased out its border closure.
It was excellent news for the Kiwi-Indian community, which had been waiting for
borders to open fully so they could have their families and friends over for a visit.
When asked about the data on 2021 Resident Visa category applications by Indian
nationals, Hogg said: “When the 2021 Resident Visa category closed on July 31
2022, over 32,000 applications including over 55,000 Indian nationals had been
made for this category. As of October 31 2022, over 20,000 2021 Resident Visa
applications submitted by Indian nationals have been approved, resulting in over
31,000 people from India becoming New Zealand residents. This is across both
phases of the 2021 Resident Visa.”
That brings us down to the fact that approximately more than 62 per cent of 2021
Resident Visa by Indian nationals has been approved so far.
Considering the increased number of visa applications due to the border re-opening
as well as the announcement of the re-opening of the Skilled Migrant category and
parents'; residence visas, INZ has confirmed that they are well geared to process the increased workload. 
According to Hogg, INZ currently has 658 Immigration Officers processing visa
applications across offices in Auckland, Christchurch, Porirua, Palmerston North,
Hamilton and the Pacific. She said, “In preparing for New Zealand's border to re-
open and as part of building our processing capacity, we recently opened an
additional processing office in Christchurch. It may be noted that the new processing
staff are trained across several different visa categories to ensure they can be
moved between different visa categories depending on visa volumes.”