Immigration Minister Nathan Guy has announced a new initiative to boost the sector, extending work rights to English language students attending courses of quality education providers in Canterbury on a trial basis of 18 months.
Announcing the initiative at the LexisNexis Immigration Law Conference 2012 held at the Stamford Plaza Hotel in Auckland on August 9, he said that students in Canterbury would be eligible to work 20 hours per week.
“But they should be studying an English Language programme of at least 14 weeks duration or a Level 4 Foundation Certificate of one academic year’s duration,” he said.
Mr Guy said that the export education sector in Christchurch had been adversely affected by the earthquakes and aftershocks.
The initiative will attract an increasing number of students to Christchurch and stimulate other sectors of the economy, he said.
Working with India
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Immigration New Zealand (INZ) and Education New Zealand will create a number of benefits for the export education industry, he said.
“These would include priority processing times for student visa applications submitted by offshore New Zealand Specialist Agents.
“The MoU was implemented in India last month and other will be in place in other countries covered by the MoU by the end of January 2013. Licensed advisers, who meet the expected standards, will also have access to these facilitative measures,” Mr Guy said.
Speaking about the ‘Outsourcing Model’ used by INZ, he dismissed critics for their ‘misguided comments’ on the role of service providers such as VFS Global Services in China.
“The Company simply receives visa applications and is not involved in the decision-making process at all. Visa Acceptance Centres are used by our partner countries all over the world. They provide a better service for customers by ensuring that that application process has been completed properly, he said.
Online processing
According to him, the Auditor General, in his 2008 Review, had found some problems within INZ around on leadership, timeliness, quality of decision-making and customer satisfaction issues.
“Since then, we have seen an increase in client and employer satisfaction, much better processing times, and a marked increase in the quality of decision-making,” he said.
Mr Guy claimed that about 50% of all student visa applications are processed online within 48 hours and that the average length of a call to the Call Centre is now about two minutes, down from a high of 14 minutes four years ago.
“A lot of hard work has gone into winning back the confidence and trust of the public and the Government. But we are hoping to do better,” he said.
Mr Guy said that efficient performance of INZ was crucial to ensure that New Zealand employers recruited the people they needed.
