Immigration New Zealand's Chief Executive, Nigel Bickle, has been talking of his desire to improve visa issuance for international students in a bid to remain competitive with other international study destinations and grow the country's market share. Visa application centres are also being planned in
China and Hong Kong, while one opened in Mumbai, India earlier this year.
One move, in terms of reforming the visa process, could be to enable quality institutions to accept low-risk students without involving the immigration authorities: mimicking the system that the UK originally rolled out when it restructured its visa system to be a points-based system in 2009.
"We hope with investment and technology, more high-value and low-risk students will be able to get visas without ever having to interact with Immigration. Automated decision-making will be the future," said Bickle. One newspaper report suggested that a tiered approach to quality was being considered, with those rated the most trusted given the best privileges in terms of visa issuance.
New Zealand has clear intentions to grow its international education industry, which is currently valued as bringing in NZ$2.5 billion in foreign exchange earnings. Immigration was going to take a more "innovative and risk-based" approach, commented Bickle, with China and India key markets to target. "Expanding these markets will help the export education sector grow into a $5 billion-dollar a year export earner which it has the potential to do," he said. (The aim is to reach this by 2025).
Another stated aim is to speed up visa processing times. As at March 2011, 89 per cent of student applications across the board were being processed within 30 days on average. By this time next year, the immigration authorities hope to improve that to 90 per cent in 25 days.
New Zealand
made it more difficult for students to remain in the country upon graduation earlier this year, in an attempt to weed out migrants duplicitously using the student visa route. It also raised visa costs,
Immigration New Zealand’s Chief Executive, Nigel Bickle, has been talking of his desire to improve visa issuance for international students in a bid to remain competitive with other international study destinations and grow the country’s market share. Visa application centres are also being planned in China and Hong Kong, while one opened in Mumbai, India earlier this year.
One move, in terms of reforming the visa process, could be to enable quality institutions to accept low-risk students without involving the immigration authorities: mimicking the system that the UK originally rolled out when it restructured its visa system to be a points-based system in 2009.
“We hope with investment and technology, more high-value and low-risk students will be able to get visas without ever having to interact with Immigration. Automated decision-making will be the future,” said Bickle. One newspaper report suggested that a tiered approach to quality was being considered, with those rated the most trusted given the best privileges in terms of visa issuance.
New Zealand has clear intentions to grow its international education industry, which is currently valued as bringing in NZ$2.5 billion in foreign exchange earnings. Immigration was going to take a more “innovative and risk-based” approach, commented Bickle, with China and India key markets to target. “Expanding these markets will help the export education sector grow into a $5 billion-dollar a year export earner which it has the potential to do,” he said. (The aim is to reach this by 2025).
Another stated aim is to speed up visa processing times. As at March 2011, 89 per cent of student applications across the board were being processed within 30 days on average. By this time next year, the immigration authorities hope to improve that to 90 per cent in 25 days.
New Zealand made it more difficult for students to remain in the country upon graduation earlier this year, in an attempt to weed out migrants duplicitously using the student visa route. It also raised visa costs,
