Six-week wait typical for work visa applications

BY SUE FEA

Foreign workers in Queenstown were waiting for six weeks and sometimes longer for simple work visas, Queenstown Salvation Army auxiliary captain Kenneth Walker said.

Mr Walker said the Brazilian Moura family, who were caught in bureaucratic limbo for two months while their temporary visa renewals were processed, were not alone.

The Salvation Army regularly had to help foreign workers out with food and support because of delays in their visas being renewed, a process that used to take 10 days, he said.

It was unfair to expect these people to arrive in New Zealand when business was buoyant and fill seasonal jobs then leave them in the lurch, he said.

"We need these people – it's shocking really, the town knows it works off the backside of these people and when they come undone they're hung out to dry."

Some employers had tried to help but they could do nothing to speed up the process.

"Everyone's felt the pinch of the recession, but come the town cranking up, there will be a cry from employers, `we can't get workers'," Mr Walker said.

"It would seem though, that Immigration is dragging its heels a bit ... I don't know why."

The numbers of Brazilians requiring help had increased to the extent that Mr Walker had asked his national office to include their ethnicity in the Salvation Army's national database.

"Unless they come to Queenstown with some financial backup they can't survive on no income.

They've got to pay rent and put food on the table," Mr Walker said.

Foreign workers got "stuck in a mode of waiting" for visa renewals – they couldn't go backward or forward and they couldn't work, although some of them continued to work just to survive, he said.

Immigration New Zealand's head of immigration Nigel Bickle said yesterday his Queenstown staff had processed 1000 more applications for the 2009-10 financial than for the previous financial year. Eighty-one per cent of them were work permits.

Most were processed within two to three weeks, although it took longer if more information was requested.

Sixty-six per cent of work applications were processed within 15 days by the Queenstown branch last month, he said.

Once additional information was given, applications were normally decided within two or three days if possible.

Two of the branch's four Queenstown staff had resigned during the past three months but additional resources were brought in from Christchurch and Dunedin tocover until replacements started work.

Checks to ensure New Zealanders were not available for the foreign workers' jobs had become "increasingly important" in changing economic times, Mr Bickle said.

- © Fairfax NZ News