Student Visa: Denied

Well, I've run out of any school options in New Zealand for Chandler.  What I find particularly maddening about it all is everyone acknowledges that if the paperwork was filed correctly, and all the fees paid, then he would be allowed access to any public school in New Zealand.  The only catch is that filing all those forms will cost $3000 and 6 months of processing.  By which time, my visitation is over and he'll be on his way home.

Recall that I started filing, calling, and writing to Immigration in about June 2010 and it has taken until March 2011 to finally get clear instructions about what is required for Chandler to attend a public school.  Had I filed for a full Residency application for Chandler, I still would have run afoul of the time it takes to process.  We ran in to this problem with our own application where the time it takes immigration to respond exceeds the limit they place on the data.. For example a medical check is only good for 3 months and it takes 6 months for them to process it... forcing you to get a second set of health checks and resubmitting your application.  Medical checks are not covered by any sort of insurance as they are totally voluntary.

Here's another annoying factoid... If I were an *illegal* immigrant, the Ministry of Education would allow my children to enroll without a Student Visa.  But because I have paid all my immigration fees and taxes (a Resident), I can't enroll Chandler without a Student Visa.  If I was here on a 30-month work visa... Chandler would be allowed a Student Visa... But again, because I'm actually a Resident, I can't do this.  I was told a few times this was to prevent the NZ tax payers from being burdened with paying for this education.  Well I'm one of those tax payers and I have been for 3 years.  Meanwhile illegal immigrants (not paying taxes) and Work Visa holders (protentially not paying taxes either) get the full benefit of public schools.  Additional insanity results when you consider my youngest son (who was part of my original Residency application) is going to public school and has been since our arrival in 2008.

One other gripe.  Legislation in NZ prevents the schools from reducing the International Student fees in any way.  There are no exception cases, no flexibility for the system to handle students in any sort of special circumstance or even temporarily.  This is really the key flaw of the system.  I understand the need to have solid requirements for Residency and Visas... but to use a system without any flexibility just serves to dramatically limit anyone willing to put up with it.

So NZ Immigration has successfully protected NZ tax payers from allowing a student from culturally participating New Zealand schools.  He won't take that experience back with him to the US.  He won't get to participate in NZ school sports.  He won't get the chance to meet other NZ students to make friends or plan future Overseas Experiences... I'm sure that protection will have a pay back.

In the meantime, we'll come up with some good home-study for Chandler.  But I can't do anything to make up for the friends he won't make.  I'll try to get him in to some other activies and we'll make do.  I'm just disappointed that we've allowed forms and policies to make our lives poorer.