vickyb69

Hi all

I have a job offer in auckland and start work on may 31st. We have (maybe prematurely) booked flights for may 4th.
We are applying for PR and have 2 issues:

1 - my medical has been referred as i have had several knee operations in the past and am due amother small one in 2 weeks. They are all minor, bad luck and mainly due to sporting injuries. I have a consultants letter to that effect. As a doctor i know they are not serious and i cannot believe a medical panel of doctors would judge them so - but how long does it take for the panel to see them and decide???

2- my husband had a bit of a mispent youth and has 2 relatively minor criminal convictions (both penalised with fines from £100-£300 and both over 10 years ago). These were detailed on the EOI and again in the application. We have been told that he is technically of 'bad character' and a character waiver needs to be prepared for my visa officers boss. We have sent him charcter references from his employer (He works in a responsible job with kids) and from the army cadets (a policeman wrote it!) where he is an adult volunteer. I have had no indication whether the charcter issue is likely to be a show stopped or whether the waiver is more of a dead cert. If it is a show stopper i will be really upset/angry as the convictions were on the EOI. Apparently the waiver cannot be prepared until the medicals are back!!

AAGGHHH - i'm getting really anxious - there is about 6 weeks until D Day - in peoples experience is this enough?

BEVS

Oh dear. Six weeks is not a long time at all .

There is no way to know exactly how long it might take to process a medical referral or a character waiver.

vickyb69

My visa officer has been really good and until now everything has been incredibly quick - maybe because of my job. But i don't know if he can push my medical etc to the top of the queue (presuming there is usually a queue??)

BEVS

I would rather imagine there would be a queue. I was rather under the impression that there were very few medical assessors to do all the work for applications requiring a medical referral & that is why a medical referral can take quite some time.

You may wish to explore a short temp work visa with NZIS & your employer to get you in and working. Health and Good Character requirements still apply but it may be worth having the discussion.

vickyb69

I have mentioned it to the visa officer by email but it seems that the problems are the same - my knee and the character waiver for my husband. If my medical got approved before my husbands, i could go on a work visa but he could not come under the holiday 6 month visa as he would not be intending to leave. Also, we have a 14 month old daughter. I don't think i could leave her behind.

It all seems so silly - i'm sure the medical would take 2 minutes of a doctors time to judge!!

Jan n Neil

I would very seriously consider getting help with the character waiver. PM me for details and don't panic

Jan

teeym

We have fairly recent experience of medicals - mine was apparently referred to their assessors on 6th Feb and has was given the all clear on 15th March. That's five weeks, give or take a day or two.

Now we aren't a priority case, so there may be a bit of "wiggle room" with regard to your case officer getting yours shifted up the priorities list? Not sure how much info you sent through, but you could forget about 2 minutes to judge for mine - I think it would have taken them about a week to read through it and that would be after finding someone who was prepared to ignore manual handling laws to lift it onto the desk.

Will be keeping fingers crossed for you!

yjx1nt7

Hi Vicky
We sent our ITA in December with a job offer,
We are still waiting ...
My partner too had a colourful past in his teens too (he is now 50)
He also had a minor abdominal surgery two yrs ago. We have to do a character waver and also had to repeat his LFT s and U/E s although they were all within normal limits at our medical in September. We needed another letter from his Consultant Surgeon whom performed the surgery stating he was in good health and detailing the surgery which was performed (although we provided this at the original medical)They wanted more information...
I don t want to put you off , However you may have a long wait ahead of you
Wishing you all the best

vickyb69

My medical was sent on march 4th so might be in luck with that then if wait time is 5 weeks....

triswebb

Hi there,

I to am in a similar position - medical was send to the Medical assessor late
Feb, its been with them 5 weeks so far and still no word - very frustrating. Without trying to sound to negative, I would seriously consider contacting your employer and warning them of a potential late start!

I contacted immigration yesterday and was told to expect another 3 - 6 week wait at least.

Six weeks is very tight...

Im keeping my fingers crossed for you!

tris

nukiwi

Oh the good old Medical Assessors.....NOT!!

I have had experience with them in the UK and here in NZ. The problem is MA's are totally independant and cannot be contacted by anyone in Immigration. We were in a similar situation as my hubby had a start date and like you we'd booked flights thinking we'd make that date. Unfortunately it got too close for comfort so we had to contact hubby's new employer to ask if they'd extend the start date and they were more than happy to do this. It is very frustrating and there is absolutely nothing you can do. We had everyone on hold i.e. removals, pet carriers, rental agents etc and had just 2 weeks notice to get everything in place once we got the go ahead. I can't honestly remember how long I had to wait in the UK for my medical referal to come back but I would estimate 4-6 weeks.

We came out on temporary working visas so we didn't apply for PR until last September and again my medical was referred to a medical assessor just on a lower than normal white blood cell count, which was from the flu I'd had a month before. I was told it would take 4-6 weeks but it actually took 10 weeks :curse: The rest of our application went very smoothly but I think the wait for medical clearance is the worse.

Keeping my fingers crossed for you but I would definitely see if you can change the start date of your job.

GOOD LUCK

vickyb69

thanks all
i have emailed work to keep them in the loop

littleal

I don't know if it's any help but I had to rearrange my flights due to being referred to the medical assessor. Apparently Immigration put all the referrals into a pile to send out to the assessor, and when the assessor has sent his last batch back, they send him the new batch.

Christmas got in the way of my referral as somebody decided the medical assessor wouldn't be doing any more checks before January. Our flight was leaving at the end of December. Work were OK to wait for me and I had to pay admin fees to rearrange the flights, keeping our fingers crossed we would be OK to make the rearranged dates. We were, and it is amazing how quick you forget... We got our indefinite returning residents visas in the post this morning after two years of having PR.

Good luck, and remember Kiwis see sporting injuries as a badge to be worn with pride.

Alison

vickyb69

The problem is that i CAN rearrange our flights - but for when!!!! 3 weeks later, 6, 9? It's ridiculous. Surely they should be able to tell me how many peoples medicals are in the queue in the front of mine and therefore roughly how long it will take!!

nukiwi

I know exactly how you feel, its just sooooo frustrating and you can't do anything to get your medical back any quicker. We have said exactly the same as to why they can't give any indication as to how many medicals are in front of yours!! Now we have our PR we are going to put in a complaint stating this.....but we won't hold our breath for an reply.

As for flights, what we did was wait until my medical was back then immediately rang the airline and booked our flights. We flew with Emirates and you can cancel up to couple of days before (or used to be). Also we could make one date change without incurring a charge.

Hang in there, it will all come right. Keep us updated.

GOOD LUCK