New Zealand’s Visa Crisis: Doctors split families forced to turn back to home Countries
The crisis for immigrant workers is not seeming to get better any time soon. The Immigration department is failing to speed up the application processing. Many immigrant workers, despite years, are still waiting for permanent residency in New Zealand.
Senior doctors couple from the UK who got the critical work visa at the time of Covid 19 are waiting for their application of permanent residency to be approved as they are not able to settle and buy a home for themselves.
The couple of Cardiologists and Haematologists are thinking again on their move to New Zealand as they are not able to get residence through Immigration Green list as their specialties do not qualify for the green list.
Sarah Hartley is a consultant Haematologist in Tauranga Hospital with her husband Rob McIntosh and three children who came to New Zealand at the time of covid and waiting since then for their residency which was supposed to be fast tracked.
Which then changed to 18 month processing which now is likely to be processed in 2024. The speed of processing visas in the present time has decreased to 235 applications per day which was 570 applications a few time ago.
With many people waiting for their applications to be processed they calculated their application will be processed by 2024. They are not able to buy a residence or settle their children in the country.
Similar is the case of dutch builder who came to New Zealand before the pandemic and is still waiting for his family’s residency application to be processed.
The application of the dutch builder was held up due to New Zealand police’s backlog checks. He is really devastated and wants to meet his family again.
After requesting the immigration department to speed up the processing as it is emotional for him to live without his family, he got the reply that there is no problem for him to visit his country and meet his family on his current visa.
But he needs to earn money for his family. He can not leave his job. Moreover, visiting them and returning again to New Zealand will only make his family more upset.
He said the immigration department is not handling things in the right way. People are getting more fed up with waiting to see their loved ones. This is not his only story but a story of many who are living in split families because of governments visa policies.
