Police certificate frustrations!

The NZ immigration requires any non-NZ citizen to get a police report every 36 months if they stay in NZ for more than 2 years. Thus, Hannah started the long, tedious and frustrating experience of obtaining a police certificate from FBI. This whole ordeal started about 3 months ago on 15th August 2011!

On July 18th 2011, Hannah went to the University of Auckland international student office to obtain forms for visa renewal. Getting all the paperwork ready, which included bank statement, tuition payment receipts, enrollment proof and health certificate, she submitted all the paperwork to the international student office the next day. However, the office could not process her application because it was less than a week before her student visa expired. Thus, she had to go to the immigration visa application office in Auckland city to apply for her student visa!...

Issue # 1
The break between the first and second semester is about 2 weeks. As a student, we are not able to enroll in any classes until we have the grades for the first semester. The grades are released shortly after 1 week, meaning we have about less than 4 days to enroll in new classes. Most of the time, the classes requires the approval of the teaching professors, which depending on their schedule may take 1 to 3 days. One of the important paperwork international students need to submit is the proof of payment of tuition fees. The student can only pay for the enrolled classes. Thus, the receipt may possibly be obtained after the start of semester 2! As a international student, most of the visa expires at the end of semester 1!...so the difficult thing is how to renew visa for semester 2 when you can't apply for visa until start of semester 2... while your visa expires end of semester 1!

Thus, Hannah submitted all the relevant paperwork to immigration NZ after skipping a couple of classes to queue up early in the morning, just to be told by the cashier to drop her application in the drop box! Two weeks later, Hannah received the whole set of application and was told her application was not approved due to the need for a FBI police certificate. At this moment, her student visa had expired! We had plans to visit my parents in Singapore, and had already bought the air tickets... we had to spend additional money in order to postpone her air ticket to a later date. Additionally, since she no longer holds a valid student visa, the lab could not pay her for all the work she was doing, meaning she was working for FREE!

Obtaining a FBI police certificate was NOT an easy task! Filling up forms, getting fingerprinted by the local police, sending it to FBI with an attached returned envelope... and all these time, NOBODY in NZ have any answers on what is the best way to approach this matter, and there are NO contact numbers for FBI either! After numerous frustrating running around places, skipping classes etc, Hannah finally mailed out the entire application with a return envelope to FBI. The return envelope contained an international stamp which FBI can redeem in any US post office. The wait for the police certificate according to their website is about 8 weeks, but it was rumored to be anything between 3 - 6 months!

The wait started!

Between the time when the documents were send to FBI and October 12th, 2011, Hannah had received several emails from the university international student office informing her of her expired student visa status. She paid several frustrating visits to the university international student office, but these visits were not fruitful. On the brighter note, Ms Oreen from the office was extremely nice and helped Hannah to feel at ease, telling her horror experiences from other international students. However, there was little she could do, and Hannah was placed on illegal immigrant status, Section 61. All these time, there was NO communication from the immigration NZ.

On October 12th, 2011, Hannah received a letter from immigration NZ informing her that she would be deported in 4 days!

Issue #2
There was no communication  between international students and the immigration NZ! When Hannah was placed in Section 61, there was no way to tell the immigration that she was trying to get her police certificate. And after being silent for weeks, the first notice from immigration NZ was that she was going to be deported in 4 days! In this modern time, there is no lack of methods of communication, ranging from emails to cell phones and even letters! Why are there only 2 letters from immigration - one to return all the application documents and the other to deport Hannah!

Frustrated, confused, sad and tired, Hannah rushed to the university international student office first thing in the morning to discuss the matter with Ms Oreen, again skipping a few classes! Ms Oreen was surprised by the action taken by immigration NZ as well! She called the person in-charge, explained the whole situation about the FBI police certificate and what actions Hannah had taken to obtain the certificate. Two days later after numerous emails and phone calls to and fro, immigration NZ decided to issue her with a student visa on the condition that she provides the FBI police certificate when she received it. Now she have her student visa! And all it took was 2 months of frustration and confusion!... while it could be easily solved by everyone talking to each other!

Two days ago, I went to the local post office to send my application for my FBI police certificate. I had seen what frustrations Hannah had been through and decided that I should get my application in WAY EARLY! I had lived in US for about 15 years, thus I decided that immigration NZ may probably decided that they need to have one police certificate from US and one from Singapore to prove that I have been behaving myself in both countries! I was told by the person at the post office that the return envelope may NOT work because the FBI officers have to go to a US local post office to redeem it, and they may NOT do it!... That may explained why it have been 3 months since the day Hannah send her application to FBI and still has not received any replies! So, we went to DHL yesterday and hoped that we can get a return envelope from them. It would solve the problem that the FBI officers have to go to their local post office to redeem and send out the certificate to us since they need to only put the certificate in the DHL return envelope and call DHL to collect it, right!? WRONG! DHL DOES NOT provide return envelopes for non-corporate accounts!

Issue #3
So how in the world can we provide a return envelope when the post office, courier companies (DHL, FedEx) does not provide this service!?

November 16th, 2011... almost 2 months after Hannah send her application for her police certificate to the FBI, she received a mail from FBI... her application was returned to her due to incomplete paperwork. There is no returned envelope for them to mail her police certificate. And in that mail, she found that FBI had kindly returned the redeemable postage! So FBI send her a package which cost USD2.13 to return the application to her (WITHOUT the police certificate) telling her that she needs to re-submit some of the application paperwork (RETURN ENVELOPE!). On the bright side, there is a contact person on the cover letter and a phone number... again, missing an email address!?.... What technology is FBI operating on?

Issue #4
I think most people if not all have the ability to send out emails. My 5-year-old nephew knows how to send and receive emails and even skype! How in the world is there NO email communication channels for one of the best government agencies in the world?

Now...back to square one!