21 April 2021
Philip
[FYI request #14936 email]
Ref: DOIA 2021-1829
Dear Philip,
Thank you for your email of 17 March 2021 requesting under the Official Information Act 1982 (the OIA),
the following information:
“1. How many Culturally Arranged Marriage visa application are currently pending for
allocation and also when they were lodged? Request list with Month and year they were
lodged.
2. Average timeframe for Case officer allocation since 2019.
3. Average time for decision on the application from the time of lodgement. Please list out
for 2019, 2020 and 2021”
Our Response
Question One: “How many Culturally Arranged Marriage visa application are currently pending for
allocation and also when they were lodged? Request list with Month and year they were lodged.”
As at 23 March 2021, there are 2 Culturally Arranged Marriage (CAM) Visitor Visa applications awaiting
allocation to a case officer. Both applications were accepted for processing by Immigration New Zealand
(INZ) in March 2021.
Question Two: “Average timeframe for Case officer allocation since 2019”
We have interpreted this part of your request to be for the average time taken for a CAM Visitor Visa
application to be allocated to a case officer since 2019.
This information is not held in a reportable format. INZ measure average processing times in calendar days
from the time an application is accepted for processing, to when the application has been finalised and
completed in the Immigration Application Management System. To provide you this information would
require a staff member to manually review each individual CAM Visitor Visa application received since 2019,
to determine the average time it took for each application to be allocated to a case officer. As such, we
have refused this part of your request under section 18(f) of the OIA, because the information requested
cannot be made available without substantial collation or research.
This task would remove Ministry staff from their core duties and therefore the greater public interest
would not be served. I have considered whether the Ministry would be able to respond to your request
given extra time or the ability to charge for the information requested but I have concluded, in both cases,
the Ministry’s ability to undertake its work would still be prejudiced.
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Question Three: “Average time for decision on the application from the time of lodgement. Please list
out for 2019, 2020 and 2021”
Please refer to table one below which provides the average calendar days taken to process CAM Visitor Visa
applications. This has been broken down by percentiles within 6 monthly intervals for applications
completed from 1 January 2019 to 23 March 2021.
Table One
50%
75%
90%
Decision date
No. of
completed completed completed
period
Applications
within:
within:
within:
(days)
(days)
(days)
1Jan19 - 30Jun19
70
68
135
184
1Jul19 - 31Dec19
49
63
101
125
1Jan20 - 30Jun20
47
79
111
158
1Jul20 - 31Dec20
57
274
297
333
1Jan21- 23Mar21
87
299
350
377
You have the right to seek an investigation and review by the Ombudsman of the decision to refuse parts
of
your
request.
Information
about
how
to
make
a
complaint
is
available
at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or freephone 0800 802 602.
If you wish to discuss any aspect of your request or this response, please contact Lautalie Leausa Vaa,
Senior
Business
Advisor,
Operations
Support,
Immigration
New
Zealand
at
[email address]. Yours sincerely,
Nicola Hogg
General Manager - Border and Visa Operations
Immigration New Zealand
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