Newsflash

New Zealand moved to Alert Level 2 on Thursday 21st May 2020 Our border remains closed for non-residents and citizens with very few exceptions.  The border closure could be for 12 months or more. Urgent changes have been made to the Immigration Act 2009 enacted by Parliament on 13th May 2020. These changes give the Minister of

Our border is now closed Who is affected? The New Zealand Government closed our border to almost all travellers from midnight Thursday 19 March 2020  except: New Zealand citizens. New Zealand residents. Their spouse and immediate dependants. Even these people will go straight into isolation for 14 days when they arrive. What does this mean if

COVID 19: What we’re doing to ensure continued services We know this is a difficult time for our clients and employers. Pacific Legal is working to minimise disruption.  We’re confident we have the systems and plans in place to do so. Our systems are portable We’re excellently placed to work remotely. All our systems including

Recently there have a lot of stories about declined partnership-based visa applications in the media. Discretion was removed for visitor visas for arranged marriages and other genuine relationships where the couple, for religious, cultural or other reasons had not yet lived together. Pacific Legal joined others in advocating for a review. Eventually, a more flexible

Pacific Legal recently raised concerns at situations where partnership temporary work visa applicants were being told by Immigration New Zealand to overstay after the expiry of their interim visas, because of processing delays. One of our clients received an email from Immigration New Zealand which invited them to remain unlawfully while they waited for a

  Employer Support for Visa While the application process for most temporary work visas are currently led by the candidate, by 2021, the process will be led by you, the employer.  You will want to have met all your obligations so your potential employee can start working for you as soon as possible. There are

Are you prepared? There are many different types of work visas. They generally fall into two types: Employer assisted. Others work visas such as graduate visas, partnership, working holiday, specific purpose and various specialist visas. These are not changing. From 2021 the biggest changes in 10 years will reduce six categories of employer assisted visas to just one

You said what? – Upcoming changes to character rules pose risks for both applicants and employers If you thought “character” issues in immigration applications are just about criminal convictions: think again! Immigration New Zealand is proposing a major redefinition of “misleading information” that includes disputed, missed or unclear answers regardless of intention. This will include information provided (or omitted)

Immigration and Employment law in New Zealand When you recruit and hire migrant workers, you must comply with employment and immigration laws.  Under these laws, employers have certain responsibilities and obligations. Employers are legally able to offer a job to an overseas candidate before they have a work or resident visa, but by the time

Hiring overseas workers Hiring overseas workers can seem like a real challenge for employers.  Recent proposed changes to work visas have made many employers uneasy.  However, we still have plenty of employers that we assist on a daily basis who simply can’t find the talent that they need onshore.  Here are some simple rules to