A New Zealander is calling on immigration to change its processes after his 70-year-old mother was asked whether she was pregnant and to provide a CV.<\/p>\n
IT security architect Osama Al Omari waited six months for his parents’ visitor visa to be approved and he had to upload the same documents more than once.<\/p>\n
The problems were still continuing for him and his family as they could not download their visa from Immigration New Zealand’s (INZ) online system, Al Omari said.<\/p>\n
The agency said it had a “small number” of complaints about downloads not working.<\/p>\n
“My parents came twice before to New Zealand, it was easy, they stayed for a month and left,” Al Omari said.<\/p>\n
“Now the process is a total pain. My mum is 70 years old – there are questions in the application ‘is my mum pregnant?’ This gives you an indication the process has not been reviewed for a long time,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Any simple business analyst would go through this process and just have a look at it and say, there should be a condition if somebody is above this age, don’t ask about pregnancy.<\/p>\n
“Or even asking about income or about what does she work on their CV or resume. Like she’s 70, she’s retired. We had to make a CV, I told my mum ‘go and write one’ or find the latest one from 15 years ago.”<\/p>\n
Al Omari did not want an apology, but he said INZ needed to understand the hurt they were causing.<\/p>\n
“After Covid, we’ve been disconnected from families for quite a while and it has hit us really bad, because we don’t have family here and we’re really dependent on seeing our parents,” Al Omari said.<\/p>\n
“I had periods where my mum was very sick but I couldn’t leave, because I didn’t have the chance to come back in,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Now the borders are open, we can’t get them in. It’s clear they have lost some of the documents, hence they want a re-upload. The whole process is not only broken, but rather unprofessional.<\/p>\n
“They came here twice before, it should be really quick, they are parents of citizens.”<\/p>\n
An immigration adviser said they had encountered the question of pregnancy in a health form for a three-year-old child, who was in a family application for residence.<\/p>\n
INZ said it was part of its standard questions.<\/p>\n
“We have received a small number of complaints about people being unable to download the approval letter\/e-visa,” said INZ assurance general manager Zoe Goodall.<\/p>\n
“In these instances, we’ve referred the issue onto our Immigration Contact Centre technical team who have then called or emailed the applicant to assist them with navigating the web page.<\/p>\n
“In relation to the wording on visa applications, questions around pregnancy form part of our standard health questionnaire which is provided to all applicants regardless of age.<\/p>\n
“Applicants need only complete sections that apply to them. We generally request an applicant’s CV if they are applying for a work visa.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A New Zealander is calling on immigration to change its processes after his 70-year-old mother was asked whether she was pregnant and to provide a CV. IT security architect Osama Al Omari waited six months for his parents’ visitor visa to be approved and he had to upload the same documents more than once. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4144,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions\/4144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}