Special direction and character waiver for a barred visitor

[Applicant A] is a retired Australian whose son lives in New Zealand and was getting married. He wanted to come for a short three-day visit to attend the wedding. Australians do not usually need a visa to visit New Zealand, but serious criminal convictions and a prison sentence meant he was blocked from being granted any visa, and the same convictions raised a separate good-character question.

Rather than wait for Immigration New Zealand to raise its concerns, we put the whole case forward when we lodged the application. We asked for the one-off exception and for the character issue to be overlooked, and we worked through every point Immigration New Zealand has to weigh. We were open about the offending, showed genuine remorse and ongoing voluntary treatment, and provided independent expert reports, including a recognised risk-assessment tool that placed him at the lowest risk level. We set out his full compliance with supervision, the fact that his home-country police had formally approved the trip, and that the visit was short, specific and easy to monitor.

We had already provided the full exception and character case, so when Immigration New Zealand wrote with its concerns we confirmed the position and asked it to keep processing on the information held. Despite this, the application was not successful and the client was not able to travel. Character waiver template completed by Immigration New Zealand showed that the application could have been decided either way. INZ ultimately leaned against due to the relative recency of the criminal offendings.

When a long prison sentence blocks a person from being granted any visa, the first step is to ask Immigration New Zealand to make a one-off exception so the application can be considered at all, and that is a different question from whether the character issue can be overlooked, so both have to be argued. It is usually better to put the full case forward at the time of lodging, so that when Immigration New Zealand raises its concerns the complete argument and evidence are already on file and the reply can simply confirm the position. Independent expert risk reports, especially a recognised risk-assessment tool, carry far more weight on the question of future risk than a person’s own assurance that they have changed. And serious offending should be met openly and honestly, then paired with real evidence of rehabilitation, full compliance with supervision, and a short, clearly defined and low-risk reason for the visit, so the decision-maker is weighing a contained request rather than an open-ended one.