Transcript
Since the beginning of last year, Immigration New Zealand has closed its public counters in Henderson, Manukau, Hamilton and Palmerston North.
Wellington's office will shut in ten days ( Nov 17) and Christchurch's just before Christmas. That leaves one at Auckland's Queen Street office which is due to close by June.
The department says people come to offices to get forms, drop off applications and check on their progress.
It wants them to instead apply online or phone the call centre.
Wellington immigration lawyer, Richard Small, says that's fine for immigrants who know they have the right documents or can pay someone to check for them.
"But for vulnerable groups and particular for Pasific people that is not a given and the sponsors who are mainly helping these people or the employers, small employers, don't have the time to expertly check every document."
The Tongan Advisory Council chair, Melino Maka, is upset his group wasn't consulted.
"Most of our Tonga Pacific community, they're not familiar with filling the appllication on line and most of them they don't have a computer and I think that will lead to people who just break the law."
The Mangere MP and new Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio, says the Manukau office closure led to delays that ended with some people classified as overstayers.
"It meant people had to travel into areas that they were not familiar with. It also took a bit of time for them to find the appropriate office that by the time that they entered their visa applications and by the time the officials returned the responses of the applications, some of the applicants were deemed to be illegal."
The chair of the Association for Migration and Investment, June Ranson, says the closures are part of a re-structuring that could prove expensive for people who will have to use a courier for last minute applications.
"It can be seen as quite a dangerous situation for the applicants who've been waiting to get their own personal documents lodged and they find right at the last minute they need to get an application in and they can't. They've got to use a courier system because Immigration used to have what they call dropboxes at the various offices and that's going to be taken away so people have got to rely on couriers."
Immigration is also proposing to close 12 of its 17 overseas visa processing centres and bring most of the work back to New Zealand., saving more than 20 million dollars a year.
June Ranson asks whether the technology's in place to support the changes, which are tipped to start next year.
"We've had huge glitches and I mean there was a mammoth one about two months ago and everything was sort of blocked off . I mean they shouldn't be releasing something unless they've tried and practised it out."
A decision on closing the overseas centres is due by the end of the year.
The new immigration minister Iain Lees Galloway, would not comment but says he has asked officials for more information.
