[marin76]

Hi Everybody,

A case officer was assigned to us. Does anybody had experience with Mrs. Adelle Curtis from NZIS London branch? Any advice?

Thanks

[Blakie]

No experience with Adele Curtis but have had experience with several others. They all seem to lack experience, maturity and have very little professionalism.

I am a Kiwi who has lived away for 28 yrs, we are looking to return to NZ with my English husband, so I am his sponsor under the family/partner category. Unfortunately I had a near screaming match with a very young, seemingly inexperienced 'immigration manager' on the phone last week. I suppose I should count myself lucky that I even got passed NZIS' Call Centre.

Through the process of my husband's application we have found errors with the information given on NZIS website, received several standardised letters requesting the same information again, with an apparent lack of attention to detail with individual elements of our case. Concerning the Police Certificates for people living in France (as we do) we actually found the correct info on the Australian Immigration website which we duly pointed out to NZIS - ouch!

Our case should not be complicated and I wonder if my partner would've fared better if he had applied under the skilled migrant category.

During my 'discussion' with the young immigration mgr last week, they pointed out the importance of, themselves firstly and obtaining as much information as they could and double checking that information. Also, how tight the control on immigration had become in the last few years. This fact I do not have a problem with but if control of migrants into NZ is so important surely is vital that the people in charge of making these decisions are mature, experienced individuals and not young NZder's in London on their 1 to 2 year OE!

After all why would we wish to submit an application with insufficient information? We have always found the UK NZIS Call Centre very helpful and informative - but the London NZIS branch and the Call Centre seemingly do not communicate or follow the same policy.

To cut a long story in half we have heard that my partner's appln. has been recommended for approval. I never dream't it would be the hassle it has been.

Good luck Marin76. Where do you hail from? With a name like that are you either into mountainbiking or come from Marin County?

[Trigirl]

on the other hand we found them unfailingly helpful, professional throughout and everything we recieved from them was accurate and complete. so i guess it depends on the individual experience.

[urban78]

Hey Blakie,

Sorry to hear you're experiencing problems with NZIS London. My experience with them while applying for my partner visa was really great and like Trigirl, they were flawless with us.

I had a great Case Officer who answered every little question for me, even if it sounded stupid, and requested to meet me when I picked up my passport with my Residence Visa to explain what would happen once I got to NZ.

I'm from France as well and found all the details about requesting police checks on the pack that NZIS sent me, as well as all the other forms to fill out :confused:

Hope things get better for you,

Jen

[marin76]

Hi I am form Bulgaria, IT Professional, Cisco Engineer and Project management
Do you know how long does it take from the moment a case officer is assigned to the intervie?

Thanks,
Marin

[zardell]

Hi Everybody,

A case officer was assigned to us. Does anybody had experience with Mrs. Adelle Curtis from NZIS London branch? Any advice?

Thanks



Hi Marin.

I'm sorry, but no I haven't had any dealings with Adele Curtis, however I'm sure that now you have got to this stage, that your interview will be quite soon.

From our own personal experience, I can tell you that from receiving the very first e.mail from our case officer, my husband had his interview within the next two weeks and we were granted our PR within the following two weeks......it took us a little longer than the norm to be granted our PR as there was an outstanding document that needed to be sent to NZIS, but all worked out fine in the end.

Good luck with your interview and keep us posted.

Anything specific re interview - just ask.

Julie

x

[marcia]

Can't help with your particular case officer but the one we had was excellent. Any email I sent was answered promptly, sometimes within minutes of me sending it. We had a couple of things queried on our ITA but a couple of emails and things were sorted swiftly.

Obviously every case is different as each persons circumstances are, but our experience with NZIS in London can't be faulted, they turned our application around so quickly we were amazed!

Good luck and don't worry things will fall into place eventually.

[Blakie]

Hi guys

Well it sounds as though most of you have had plain sailing with your applns. which is what I expected for my husband's appln. I assumed that because I was a NZder the process would be a doddle.

I am interested to know what aspect of our 'relationship' they picked up on that they needed so much further clarification on but they won't tell us. My husband's case officer has never spoken to us, we get one line emails and if he does send us a letter they appear to be standardised, with every indication of very little attention to detail or response to questions we have put to him.

In terms of how long the approval takes from the time a case officer allocated I think it is down to specifics and what category of entry you are applying under. NZIS told me that partnership applns. were generally much quicker than say skilled migrant categories but not so in our case.

Urban78, glad you didn't have the problems we had with the police certificate in France but the address they gave both on their forms and on their website were both definately wrong when we applied in April, perhaps they changed since you got yours? Once we did have the correct address we were pleasantly astonished that the French police clearance came back by fax/post in less than 24 hrs!! I daresay you know how long things like that can take in France!

Just out of interest Urban78 did you have to have a Certificat de Demanagement filled out and signed by your local maire to say you were leaving France? We had to and although not a problem because our mayor is a top bloke - we had never heard of anyone else having to have this.

Good luck to you all with your progressing applications.

[urban78]

Hi guys

Well it sounds as though most of you have had plain sailing with your applns. which is what I expected for my husband's appln. I assumed that because I was a NZder the process would be a doddle.

I am interested to know what aspect of our 'relationship' they picked up on that they needed so much further clarification on but they won't tell us. My husband's case officer has never spoken to us, we get one line emails and if he does send us a letter they appear to be standardised, with every indication of very little attention to detail or response to questions we have put to him.

In terms of how long the approval takes from the time a case officer allocated I think it is down to specifics and what category of entry you are applying under. NZIS told me that partnership applns. were generally much quicker than say skilled migrant categories but not so in our case.

Urban78, glad you didn't have the problems we had with the police certificate in France but the address they gave both on their forms and on their website were both definately wrong when we applied in April, perhaps they changed since you got yours? Once we did have the correct address we were pleasantly astonished that the French police clearance came back by fax/post in less than 24 hrs!! I daresay you know how long things like that can take in France!

Just out of interest Urban78 did you have to have a Certificat de Demanagement filled out and signed by your local maire to say you were leaving France? We had to and although not a problem because our mayor is a top bloke - we had never heard of anyone else having to have this.

Good luck to you all with your progressing applications.

Hiya Blakie,

Yes partner visas will take much less time to be processed than skilled migrant visas. Plus as of recently, Immigration decided to remove quotas for partner visas, for NZ citizens/residents (never knew there was a quota!).


To be honest, I have no idea what they might have picked up about your relationship. When we put our application in, we were never questioned re proof of relationship (would have been a surprise since we put in more than what was requested on the cribsheet with the paperwork sent to us). The only thing my CO picked up was my knee surgery, which the panel doc had picked up too but wasn’t worried about, and was asked for a letter from my GP, and given 1 month to provide it. If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you and your husband been together? What kind of info regarding proof of relationship did you put in? I remember the request for more info kinda being standardized but I simply called my CO the next day and got details from him which he was happy to help with. I would have thought that originating from a non-english speaking country, I would have gone through more red tape but it wasn't the case.

As far as French police certs, I remember seeing a postal address to request them on the forms but from memory, I knew that could be done online so did a google search and got them back through the post within 48hrs too (quite a shock from my experience with French administration and red tape :laugh ). I’m afraid I can’t help re the “certificate de demenagement” as I lived in London when applying. I’m curious to why they’d ask you for that..and I don’t even know what it is :laugh

Feel free to post again if you wanted to know anything else about French admin or anything else, or send me a private message ;)

Jen :)