Newsflash

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

How do I apply for a border exception? To apply for an exemption a basic email form is completed which if successful will lead to an invitation to apply. No documents can be attached to email to apply and the explanation field amounts to 60 words or so. We have got around this in some

Other critical workers: Is there a ray of light in the tunnel? Recent media coverage has referred to exceptions for the critical production staff for the movie Avatar, the sewerage tunnel in Wellington and a few other mission-critical projects of obvious economic benefit to New Zealand. The original process required support from the Minister of

New Zealand moved to Alert Level 1 on Tuesday 9 June 2020… 80 days after the government announced the alert system on 21 March 2020 New Zealand had achieved no new cases of COVID-19. We moved down to Level 1 on 9 June 2020. There are very few restrictions at this level. Domestically the focus

Repeat Labour Market tests Immigration Instructions already provide that a skills match reports must be provided from MSD for ANZSCO skill level 4 and 5 positions.  The tests include that the employer must show genuine efforts to recruit, that the position is financially sustainable (that could be difficult for employers who have applied for the