A client had visited New Zealand in 2019 to meet his partner (who was then just a friend). In 2022, they approached us with a declined general visitor visa application. We submitted another general visitor visa application which was declined. When we requested the case officer’s notes under the Official Information Act, we noted various lapses in the processing of the application. We submitted two more visitor visa applications which were also declined.
We then contacted the Practice Leads of the Henderson branch and argued that the decision to decline our client’s most recent application was incorrect because we had responded to all the concerns raised by INZ. They asked us to submit another visitor visa application and finally our client got fourth time lucky.
It was important for him to be able to come to New Zealand because his partner was not able to get time off from work to meet him in his home country and get married there. They had never lived together and their relationship was long-distance with an almost 15-year age gap between them, this was an uphill task from day 1.
This application was successful purely because of our expertise in interpreting immigration instructions, ability to lock horns with INZ when they are wrong, and the ability to guide the client to submit only relevant evidence.
