[MB]

Hi. Great forum - nice to be here. One quick sanity check for my own peace of mind, that I haven't seen asked in quite this way so far:

I sure appreciate that some folks here have timetables they'd like the NZIS EOI processing to be able to fit in with. But isn't it basically the case that - as long as everyone's EOI selected thus far is pretty solid and correct - it's more or less just a question of time (rather than any strong possibility of being declined) that is the cause of anxiety?

Put another way, surely the main thing we all need to be convinced of - if our EOI has been selected from pool by now - is that NZIS have a pretty strictly linear method from this point on? E.g., a case of 115 points w/o job offer selected on OCtober is in a "better " position thatn one selected laster this month, say?

Or - yikes! - will the November and December ones with around the same points be dealt with more cumulatively, so that earlier pulls don't have much advantage?

Cheers,
Matt.

[MB]

Oops. Clarifications:

Someone reading my post who's currently preparing their EOI for submission soon might think I was being snotty. Sorry. Hope your (and my!) EOI is successful. I was trying hastily to come up with an example of whether the current 2-3 month EOI-to-ITA delay will mean that all EOIs that come in in the meantime will be stacked up in one grid and dealt with by rank that way... or whether, say, an EOI claim for 105 points submitted in September will still be "ahead in line" of a 105 claim submitted about now.

Also, my italicized "selected" phrase in my first post was meant to refer to selection from the pool, not to the stage (approval for ITA) after that.

Matt.

[jo b]

Matt,

welcome to the forum :nice1

Sorry I am being dead thick :no I don't understand what you mean :oops:

Could you clarify a little more please.

Jo

[catjlin]

Good question MB, now you've got me wondering. :? Wish I had an answer. Anyone?

Jo B, I think what MB is getting at is, say an EOI of 105 was pulled in September, will that EOI of 105 still be ahead of an EOI pulled in November if the November EOI has a score of 115. At least, I think that's what the question is.

All I know is, since it appears Bush is president again for 4 more years, our flight to NZ seems even more pressing than before!

[MB]

Jo - -sorry! I’ll have a go:

Let’s suppose someone sends a pretty clean, solid EOI of 115 points, no job offer, in October. It gets selected from pool in October, too. Fine. Now we're also fairly sure that NZIS work vertically down the rankings, through the hefty ‘with-job-offer’ EOIs, until they get to the lower scores.
But here’s the thing. If the current delay before preliminary checks are done is 2-3 months or so, will that October 115 claim get considered methodically in due course… or, if in the meantime someone submits for 115 in November, will both claims for 115 more or less end up being considered at the same time because they’ll be lumped together? Surely not? Surely the earlier your EOI gets selected from pool, the better?

NZIS do say that it isn’t first come first served, but I think they mean that that’s the case at the very first EOI stage… i.e., they’re saying that simply hitting ‘Submit EOI’ doesn’t mean you’ll get looked at until their regular drawings (and even then that they rank all claims anyway).
I can’t think they mean that, once selected, an October 115 claim has no advantage over a 115 claim submitted weeks or months later.

The subtext to my question is this: as the numbers applying for immigration are not great anyway this year, aren’t all of us who have been pulled from pool already pretty much in purely a waiting game? I know that a lot of us have houses to sell, etc., but surely those folks’ stress is just when they’ll get an ITA, not if they’ll get an ITA? (Always assuming that all our EOIs are pretty solid and reliable, of course, and won’t be rejected for hefty inaccuracy.)

Matt.

[jo b]

Ah now I get it,

Thanks Caitlin for clarifying that.

It is my belief that if you have been selected that they only put job offer applications as priority then date order not points order.

This was attached to another thread which may be of help.

http://www.immigration.govt.nz/Branch/LondonBranchHome/News/skilledmigrantprocessingtimes.htm

Jo

[Tash]

Hi Matt
I hope you're right - that those who applied earlier (and were selected earlier) will have their actual residency application sorted ahead of, say someone who was selected 3 months later. But it seems that there is little logic to the processing system. I may be cynical, but trying to predict their timings seems like a futile task. I know for a fact: person B applied 8 weeks after person A, with an identical application (same profession, same current employers, they trained in the same place, similar age etc.). B has received an ITA, A hasn't. All the nzis claims don't fit. It's luck of the draw, which is a bizarre way to deal with such a large volume of applications, the outcomes of which have a huge bearing on all our lives.
Just my 2-cents worth. Sorry if it's a bit pessimistic. :(
Keep in touch with your progress.

[MB]

Interesting. Sorry about any stress you (we!) might be going through because of that. You’re not the first person (although your example hardly fits this) to make me wonder whether – as well as any vertical ranking of EOIs – there might be legitimate intersecting ‘horizontal’ criteria the NZIS uses. Such a criterion might be a variable as simple as the applicant’s home country (purely and only so that their EOI can be quickly divereted from the overburdened London and NZ offices) or even whether, say, the EOI applicant answered ‘Yes’ to Future Growth Area (remember that there’s a place on the EOI where you can indicate that even without job offer, and that FGA folks even without jobs can now (or soon) be granted PR without interview).
I doubt it. Worth a thought, though. And as I say, it doesn’t really fit with the case you outlined.

Matt.

[Lil]

Sorry MB, if we're appearing a bit thick, but are you saying that because your EOI has been selected that there is no reason you won't get in? I think that you seem to be saying that it's just a matter of waiting your turn once selected. If you look at the fortnightly report that comes with each selection, you will see that there certainly is no shortage of EOIs and they are not in an way desperate to get more people in, they are actually on target for this year's intake. If you look at the maths, there is a huge drop off rate of people that don't take the matter any further than EOI and a another big chunk of folks who get rejected. I don't think they have even started the interview process for people without job offers, but once they do I bet a lot more get turned down.

So having EOI selected does not give you automatic passage to the next stage.

[MB]

Lil - thanks. I'm not saying that everyone who gets EOI selected will automatically get in. For a start, there are many points overclaims and the factors you mention. But reading your post does prompt me to ask (sorry if I'm being really naive!) why the pass mark has dropped so low if they are not seriously going to consider those in, say, the 100-120 range.

What has brought the NZIS (since July 1, say) to the point at which they are comfortably meeting their quota? Isn't the problem that they were having trouble attracting enough folks who had the really big scores and job offers? I.e., that for this year at least they're conceding that it might be worth issuing either work permir ot PR to people with formidable quals. and work experience, but no job offer?

Finally, is your outlook re. the no-job-offer interview stage applicable only to people who are going for full PR? What about the more likely 2-year permit option... surely that's a fairly poitive and likely outcome for many of those people, rather than utterly being turned down?

Cheers,
Matt.

[MB]

Lil - sorry, one more thing. Isn't it the case that, for the year ending June 30, the NZIS only approved 56% of their target for that year?

I'm definitely going to go and have another look at the fortnightly tables/charts.

Here's my math, though. Let's suppose they're up to 33000+ on the EOIs (that number, I gather from another post, refers to the total number of people within all applications, not the number of apps.)
We can more or less halve that because the EOI system's first quota year ended in June. So let's say that, from July-October, they have about 16500 total people (7000 principal applicants, roughly) under their wing. They reckon that about 20% of those will be rejected for overclaims, dropouts, etc.
So now, for the first quarter of the new year, they're at about 12000-13000 total people for SMC.
Now, as you say, that's on target, but isn't it on target only given the much lower passmarks recently? I.e., the healthy number of total people in with a good chance for this time of year is only healthy because many of them are in the 100-120 range.
Note that this total people pool is not the same as their "PR approved" columns in the table.. which , as you say, is I bet made up mostly of big scorers.

Again: sorry if my math is way off!

Matt.

[veronica]

If the figures quoted are world wide they may lose quite a high proportion through the English language test from other parts of the world. (although there has been some talk of easing that)

[MB]

According to the 27 Oct sheet, NZIS had approved fewer than 2000 apps. (fewer than 5000 people) between July and late October. That's fewer than 5000 people for virtually the first third of their year.

Right? Or not? (Believe me, I'm not just being rhetorical!) :uhoh

So their distacne thus far from their 22000 maximum makes me fairly opimistic about the chances of EOIs that are pretty accurately completed (and Veronica's quite right to point out the English-language question-mark above many).

But I'm not a city analyst or statistician. Am I being led by the nose?
:roll:
Matt.

[Lil]

I really haven't studied the numbers enough to make any predictions, I know a man who does but sadly he has been banned from posting on this site. I think what is abundantly clear though is that NZIS have not really got a grip of the numbers themselves since they introduced this system earlier this year. It's almost a year since they introduced the EOI process and unless someone can tell me otherwise, I don't think anyone has actually got PR or indeed Work to Residency without a job offer. I reckon it'll be quite a while yet before we start to hear from people who have.

Hang on in there.

[chips]

Well spotted Lil,
IS there anyone out there who has been granted PR, without a job?
( not just recieving ita either!)
It will be a BIG boost for those who are waiting ,waiting etc, and worrying.

:hopeso :hopeso :hopeso :hopeso X 10000 for you all who wait.

[MB]

It's been two or three weeks since this thread first appeared and, with my daily checking of this great forum, that already seems like a long time ago!

I'm very grateful for all the replies to this. I do appreciate, for instance, Lil's whole take on this subject: that great point about the sparsity of no-job applicants with a decision in hand is only just starting to look like it might change soon.

What still catches my attention is the NZIS continuing to keep the selection point at 100 despite the big workload it is generating. I can't see that keeping it so low has much real benefit for them unless the 100-120 crowd (as long as their EOIs are pretty sound) are eventually going to be taken seriously on the whole. In other words, I have faith in due process and the orderliness of the queue... indeed my whole point about starting this thread was to try to gauge how many people's anxiety on this forum is because they're concerned about the timing of the ITA/PR rather than with whether it will eventually happen at all.

What's new with you, fellow EOI hopefuls? We had a bit of a self-discovered scare about what NZIS might consider full-time work (see other thread), but hope we have this pretty solidly squared away. And we're confident that, even at its severest outcome, any adjustment wouldn't drop us below our drawing's selection point.

Anyway, point is that I'm dragging this thread up again to see what's on other folks' minds as we all wait. It can be a bit of a challenge! Personally, our philosophy is to try to use the time to work on our plan and our paperwork so that all(!) is in place if and when things change!
:nice1
Cheers to all,
Matt.

[Lil]

Well I'm still here with you waiting with baited breath for some news, (any news), the days just slip by and we wait a bit longer. The last estimated date for 18th August selections was that ITAs would be with us by 18th November and.......? It is very frustrating, but like you Matt we have to believe that there is some method to this madness and hope that they are working their way trough that big pile. Someone, who's name escapes me who had been in the pool since early in the year was selected early August had their interview last week. So if you were a late entrant like me that might explain why we have waited so long.

I keep telling myself we will hear something any day soon, but have also been waiting almost as long for NZQA - so even if we got the ITA tomorrow I would be in no position to do anything with it. So hey ho, here's hoping they all arrive on the same day. :hopeso

[MB]

Lil - heh! Your line about my perhaps being "a late entrant" like you made me feel a bit woozy, as we were selected more than two months after you (27th Oct.)!

To iterate the most compelling aspect of all this: if the number of skilled migrants they want to attract via SMC is 22000 -- not much different from other years' targets -- and if they are swamped by all these 'floodgates' applicants, then why keep the points so low plus put the December policy relaxations in place?? And why the impression we seem to get of their being unusually swamped and backlogged??? I'm not trying to tweak the nose of their excellent and overworked staff. I think I'm just trying to hint that the subtext to all this is that the no-job applicants will get their fair turn.

Another thought: if they haven't processed us all and/or have met their quota by early-mid 2005,, do we (if successful) just get put onto the start of next financial year's figures? And perhaps more signifcantl;y, perhaps their aim is to give many of us PR deferrals (i.e., not on their quota figures yet) in the form of 2-year work permits.

Matt.[/b]

[Lil]

Do you know, I really haven't got a clue the numbers stuff just does my head in so I'll just wait my turn. It's a bit like having a life sentence just ticking off the days with no end date, hoping that you'll get out one day.

[MB]

I think I know what you mean, Lil! I know I've been badgering on a lot about the numbers, but quite apart from all that there's a sense in which all our discussion about quotas, financial years, etc. might be fairly pointless anyway...
... which is that as long as our applications are judged against the selection point at time of application (and they are, which makes sense, because that week's point is the only salient "tracer" as long as they work through the backlog of apps. in order), it may not matter which year or quota we figure in eventually 'cos they can't (I think) just reject hundreds of applications wholesale as soon as, say, next June 30 has passed. And even if the pass mark by then is up to, say, 150+, that won't reflect the need for migrants (and hence selection point) that was in place in our "era".

So lie you say, probably best just to trust the numbers they knew they'd get when they keyed these points at 100, and wait!

Matt.

[MB]

...Oh, blimey, that got almost as number-crazy and wordy as what I was trying to avoid! All I mean is that however long NZIS takes, they'll judge our apps. against the selection point we were chosen at because that selection point was chosen for a good reason. So we no-jobbers should still get a fair shot, as long as we don't get pushed incessantly to the back of the line by some amazing new influx of thousands of sudden 'with-job' applicants! And even then there's probably hope!

Matt.