[Joolzr]

Hi all

We trying to get temporary work visa's really quickly so my OH can start a job in June. Really stressed and scared to book flights, movers, rent the house til we know when we can leave.

Anyone any experince of applying for a work visa in London? Can you take everything in and apply? Or does it have to take the 10 days they say on the website?

Would really appreciate any elses experince.

Thanks

Joolz

[Destiny]

Hi Joolz,

It was interesting to see your question posted as we are also considering the same option. We are also unsure about getting visas quickly and wondered whether you can do this at New Zealand House in London.

Does anyone know if you can just turn up and ask them questions as our visa requests are not particularly straight forward and we have loads of unanswered questions?

Thanks in advance,

Destiny

[renew]

you can just turn up and ask questions. I turned up about 1/2 and hour before they close and there was no one waiting

good luck

cheers

[Destiny]

Thanks. Do you know whether you can submit your visa application at New Zealand House too? We are applying for student visas and one gaurdian visa?

[cappuccino]

I took all my paperwork to the London office and had their officials check it over. They said it would take 2 weeks to process but I got my passport back in 3 days!!! This was in January so I thought they might have a backlog after xmas. Good luck.

[M&J]

I took all our paper work to London, they checked it over there and then. Again said it would take up to two weeks, I had an e-mail the next working day confirming the application had been approved and got pasports back the next.

I only waited about 30 mins to speak to someone, you just walk in and take a number for the right queue (PR or Visa application)

[Eve & Paul]

Cappucino and M&J,

Were you guys applying for a general work visa or going skilled migrant route? If you did go work visa route, wondered if you could tell me what you submitted as evidence that your employer couldn't recruit a Kiwi?

By taking things down in person and having them 'check things over' - what did they actually do? Do they tell you if they think you haven't got enough evidence before you actually submit it?

Sorry for all the questions. We've just got so much invested in this now that we're a bit paranoid about ensuring it all goes through - crossing all the i's and dotting all the t's....

More detail about your experiences would be a great help. :)

Thanks!

[M&J]

Cappucino and M&J,

Were you guys applying for a general work visa or going skilled migrant route? If you did go work visa route, wondered if you could tell me what you submitted as evidence that your employer couldn't recruit a Kiwi?

By taking things down in person and having them 'check things over' - what did they actually do? Do they tell you if they think you haven't got enough evidence before you actually submit it?

Sorry for all the questions. We've just got so much invested in this now that we're a bit paranoid about ensuring it all goes through - crossing all the i's and dotting all the t's....

More detail about your experiences would be a great help. :)

Hi

OH applied for a general visa and I believe that because the the job involved skills that were on the skills short list the company didn't have to submit evidence they had tried to recruit a kiwi.

They don't actually check the individual documents but they do check you have included everything, I also explain each document we submitted as work experience.
Hope this helps

Jo

Thanks!

[Joolzr]

Thanks C & M

Thats reassuring. We're applying for 2 year temporary work visa- OH has a job on the skills shortlist and I'm going via the family stream. But we have to wait 1 month for the medical council to do their paperwork before he can apply. Then I have to wait for his visa to come through before I can apply! So according to all the guidelines it could be two months before we can go :-(

Our originally leaving date was 7th May- looks unlikley! But OH is unemployed from 1st May so we need to go ASAP. All a bit too stressful at the moment....

J

[Potato]

Took me maybe 6 weeks for a general work visa, but I wasnt using skills shortage and I had to prove there was no available kiwi.

[Caroline and Dave]

Hi Joolz,

It was interesting to see your question posted as we are also considering the same option. We are also unsure about getting visas quickly and wondered whether you can do this at New Zealand House in London.

Does anyone know if you can just turn up and ask them questions as our visa requests are not particularly straight forward and we have loads of unanswered questions?

Thanks in advance,

Destiny

Hi,
I read on another thread that you are talking about student visa's mainly.
Our 2 children (24 and 26) applied for student visas and had all their medicals etc, then went down to New Zealand House and they gave them their visa's straight away, wheras our visa's took months

Hope this helps

dave and caroline

[cappuccino]

In terms of proof, my employment was via a recruitment agency specialising in my line of work. They supplied me with a copy of the job advert to show where it had been advertised and a letter stating that no Kiwis had applied with the specific skill set and qualifications that they required for the job. I applied for a 3 year work permit which was quicker than going for PR as I needed to start work by 11th Feb. I have now applied for PR and am just about to submit my ITA.

[Eve & Paul]

Took me maybe 6 weeks for a general work visa, but I wasnt using skills shortage and I had to prove there was no available kiwi.

Hi Potato,

Paul's job offer isn't on the skills shortage list either so be curious to know more about how you managed an approval. :) What evidence did you have to provide to prove there was no available kiwi? How difficult were they about approving the visa?

Be grateful for your feedback as it is difficult to find much online about this aspect of applying for a general work visa. OH's (prospective) employers are very keen to get him (us) over but this is their first time in this situation as well.

Just don't want to give them any excuse to decline our application! :(

[benhila]

Hi Eve and Paul,

When we applied for a 3-year work visa, we were asked to submit an Employer Supplementary Form (NZ 1113) where the employer confirms that his attempts to find Kiwi employees have failed. Check out the link
www.immigration.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/BC2C4F49-C3CE-4940-969C-B5E257AB25CF/0/1113.pdf

Good luck,

Hila

[Eve & Paul]

Hi Eve and Paul,

When we applied for a 3-year work visa, we were asked to submit an Employer Supplementary Form (NZ 1113) where the employer confirms that his attempts to find Kiwi employees have failed. Check out the link
www.immigration.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/BC2C4F49-C3CE-4940-969C-B5E257AB25CF/0/1113.pdf

Good luck,

Hila

Hi Hila,

Many thanks for your reply! :) We've actually got that form and passed it on to Paul's employers already. We're just trying to find out from others (who've gone the non-skills shortage list, general work visa route) how difficult the visa was to obtain?

We're pretty confident about our application (I emigrated from the US to the UK 6 yrs ago and so have some experience with this immigration malarkey! ;) ) but feel that if any aspect of the application was to go wrong it will likely be the "proving they can't employ a Kiwi" bit, as we're unsure how resistant NZIS are towards granting work visas for non-skills shortage jobs? So we're trying to get as much information as we can to help Paul's employers complete the ESF as accurately as possible.

Sorry if this sounds silly, but we're just trying to comfort ourselves about the aspects of our application that are out of our control. In particular, I'm having a bit of a 'worry wobble' today and feel very in need of reassurance! :roll

Be grateful if you could give me any more details about your experience. Any warnings or tips?

Thanks again for the reply. :)

Eve

[benhila]

Hi Eve

We are actually in the middle of the work visa process; we only submitted the filled-in ESF today. Ben was on the skills shortage list and his prospective employer actually advertised twice in 2007 and failed to find Kiwis who could do the job, so I can’t really answer any of your questions. But (like you) I have more- and less-optimistic days. Let’s hope tomorrow will be a good one for both of us….

Hila

[Potato]

Hi Potato,

Paul's job offer isn't on the skills shortage list either so be curious to know more about how you managed an approval. :) What evidence did you have to provide to prove there was no available kiwi? How difficult were they about approving the visa?

Be grateful for your feedback as it is difficult to find much online about this aspect of applying for a general work visa. OH's (prospective) employers are very keen to get him (us) over but this is their first time in this situation as well.

Just don't want to give them any excuse to decline our application! :(

Hi,

Initially my employer filled out the Supplementary Form with fairly basic details, and not very in depth.
My case officer wrote to me and said that he did not accept the evidence (fair enough since not much was provided) and so was not satisfied that the policy criteria was met. He also emailed my employer to ask for details about the application process, which was provided.
I then went into every nook and cranny I could to try and prove myself. This involved asking my employer to provide as much detail as possible about the application process and *specifically* why the Kiwis who applied were not suitable for the position. My employer was very good about this, going into enough detail about various kiwi applicants and explaining why they were not suitable. The other issue is that there weren't that many kiwi applicants in the first place, however, NZIS really wanted to know why those who did apply could not be employed.
Basically it came down to the fact that I was a more suitable applicant, I had statements from my employer that certain kiwis (meaning citizens and residents) were not suitable in "non-academic" areas but also (and this surprised me) they had applications from NZ residents who had such poor English that they were unsuitable. I did wonder how on earth they got to be residents. But that was another issue, and another boiling resentment with NZIS.
I had enough information from my employer to, I believe, resolve the issues. However, I also wrote a fairly long (2000 words...don't ask me how it got that long) essay expanding on the evidence, putting it into context and in particular looking at specific policy criteria and going through why I did satisfy them. I didn't really leave anything untouched. Perhaps this was un-necessary, however I wasn't going to take any chances and in the end my visa was approved. Astonishingly, I had more of a battle on my hands getting the work visa than residency. Mainly because for residency I didn't have to prove any of the "no suitable kiwi" stuff.

I was somewhat disappointed with my work visa case officer, he came off as fairly unprofessional with his very poor spelling and grammar (seriously, how can you get the name of your client *entirely* wrong when asking his prospective employer for information regarding the application process?), poor attention to detail and apparent inability to process fairly simple arguments.
I did find that the entire process left me with a bit of a bad taste in the mouth regarding NZIS. I work in a fairly specialised area of science, my employer, more than anyone, knows who is suitable and who is not. It was quite galling and frustrating to have a nobody repeatedly question us on "suitability".
However, my PR process was pretty smooth, and now that I am out of the whole thing and don't have to deal with NZIS anymore, I do look back on it with almost no bitterness. It was expensive and frustrating, but I think the policy makes it that way, and having a poor case officer did not help.

Just to clarify- I earn under $50k at the moment, I am not on the skills shortage list but my employer *is* accredited. However, without the $50k salary this is apparently not relevant.

[Jennispink]

I'm in the process of applying for general WV not through skill shortage. There's another girl who doing the same for the same job as me (there were 2 positions) and she got her passport back in 8 days via postal application.
I've had to re submit our's with more evidence of mine and Matt's partnership (because he won't marry me but that's so far OT it's not even worth it:laugh ) and also further evidence of my previous work experience. Even so they turned that bit around in 3 working days via post so pretty quick I thought.

We'll see what attempt no. 2 brings:nice1

[benhila]

We're applying for 2 year temporary work visa- OH has a job on the skills shortlist and I'm going via the family stream. Then I have to wait for his visa to come through before I can apply! So according to all the guidelines it could be two months before we can go :-(

J

Hi

We had to apply for a temporary work visa since our PR application is unlikely to come through in time (we are flying out on the 8th of May). Ben has a job on the skills shortlist and I went through the family stream; we did it simultaneously, I did not have to wait for his visa to come through. We did, though, have to provide evidence that Kiwis were not a viable option for the job (form NZ 1113). We submitted everything by hand to NZ House on Wednesday and, despite being told that it will take 2 weeks, got a call today to confirm that the passports are ready for collection. So, once you get all the documents sorted it can be a matter of days rather than weeks!

Good luck!

Hila

[Joolzr]

Thanks Hila

This is exactly what I'm hoping for- yesterday we discovered that my OH's professional body had lost his application! Looks like we'll have to stay on top of them and just do all our bits as quickly as possible. We're hoping to fly around the 18th May so may be just behind you guys....

Joolz

[lisa jayne]

Hiya,

New to this site...My hubby has job offer with accredited company so will be a wtr visa. I have printed off 2x1015, 2x1012 and 1x1016 will we also need his employers to complete the 1113????
We had our medicals last Thursday so if all OK we will also take everything to London as we are aiming to be out there by the 16th May.
Also with regards to documents, photos etc do you send originals?? and all work experience paperwork.

Any help on this would be great.

Lisa:)