Newsflash

On Thursday 13 April Richard Small Director and Principal Lawyer of Pacific Legal attended a meeting between the Chair and Deputy Chair and immigration lawyers.  The Immigration and Protection Tribunal deals with 4 main kinds of appeals:  Appeals against declined residence applications  Appeals by people without visas on humanitarian grounds  Appeals by residents facing deportation […]

The New Zealand Border Reopening   Right now, our border remains closed as it has been since March 2020. Many categories of visa are on hold and only New Zealand residents and citizens, their dependents, and a small number of others with a “critical purpose” are allowed entry. New strains of COVID-19 have led to

Pacific Legal Covid 19 Visa Update 9 October 2020: Important changes for onshore employer supported work visas and work to residence Post Covid19, change seems to be the only constant in immigration. Since our September update, there have been further changes.   There are likely to be further changes over the coming months. Check our website

Pacific Legal Covid 19 Visa Update 9 October 2020: Restrictions eased for partners and dependants from visa free countries: Voucher system for managed isolation Post Covid19 change seems to be the only constant in immigration. Since our September update there have been further changes.  There are likely to be further changes over the coming months. Check

Pacific Legal Covid 19 Visa Update 9 October 2020: Good news for some offshore work visa holders and their employers… but with some fish-hooks… Currently, people who are overseas cannot make a temporary visa application until 10th November 2020.  This is a 3 month suspension on applications from August 2020.  It is not clear whether it

Pacific Legal succeeds with critical Worker Applications for $50 million Te Arai Golf Course project: Welcomes Changes for Employers Over the past five months, when most employers were unable to get highly skilled staff into New Zealand, Pacific Legal has had the pleasure of achieving successful visa outcomes for the new Te Arai Links golf course

COVID 19 update 11 September 2020 On 30th August 2020, Auckland moved back to Covid 19 Alert level “2.5” while the rest of New Zealand to level 2. This will be in place until at least 16th September 2020. Our office is open… with safeguards Our Newmarket office has re-opened on an appointments-only basis for

For those in New Zealand: Have a plan Those with temporary visas due to expire between 2nd April and 9th July 2020 automatically had their visas extended until 25th September 2020 on the same terms as their current visa. As at 25 June, Immigration New Zealand had not reached any firm decisions about what to do with

We are continuing to get queries from people offshore asking if the business and investor category is continuing on a business as usual basis. What are the options? There are two main investment categories: Investor 1 (minimum investment NZ$10 million for at least three years) and Investor 2 (minimum investment NZ$3 million for at least

Proving the position still meets the labour market test The basic rule for many of our work visa categories is that no New Zealanders are available for, or could be retrained to do, the work and that the employer has made genuine efforts to recruit New Zealanders. A picture has started to emerge of tougher