Immigration New Zealand are “assessing the situation” after several people applying for a Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) residency applicaton have complained the website has been slow the last few days and keeps throwing up errors.
“I’ve been trying to complete my application, but I am unable to even log into my account,” says an Indian migrant who is midway through completing the application.
The last date for submitting an Expression of Interest for SMC Permanent Residency under the 180-point rule is end of day August 14, 2023. With less than two weeks remaining for the deadline, such website errors have caused panic among applicants.
Screenshot from the Immigration site
Soon after you fill in your log in details, the website redirects to an error page with the message ‘please try again later’. A few applicants who managed to log in after several attempts have complained of the same error message coming up midway through the session.
Immigration New Zealand say they are aware of the problem. General Manager Service Design and Implementation Karen Bishop told The Indian Weekender they are “working on a way forward”.
“We are aware that some of our customers are experiencing issues when trying to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) under the Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) in our online system.
“We are currently assessing the situation and working on a way forward. We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this is causing and thank them for their patience as we work through this.”