the coldest day in new zealand (ang lupit ng taglamig sa new zealand)

[it’s not always nurses, IT engineers, scaffolders and dairy workers that our Inang Bayan gives up to New Zealand’s industries. Some just come here trying their luck, hanging on to any job. and soldiering on till they catch a break. Unfortunately, they get caught between the cracks, and time passes them by. Isinalin mula sa Tagalog. ]

dear Kuya Noel

DON’T ASK ME how long I’ve been in New Zealand. practically all of the people I started out with have long become permanent residents, since been citizens, or have gone home. For reference, the younger Bush was still president of the mightiest nation on earth, and kabayan Manny Pacquiao was still earning the second or third of his eight world titles. That’s how long I’ve been in this Paradise.

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Earliest days in New Zealand, my stay was already threatened. Those days, as now, wide latitude was granted in decisions to issue or deny work visas, as many factors were (and are) considered. One such factor was that my position was not “essential” enough so that recruitment outside New Zealand wasn’t a priority.

To her credit and deserving of my eternal gratitude, my then HR manager told the immigration officer that the substance we were manufacturing was something consumed by Kiwis everyday and without which meals wouldn’t be complete. I was ready to go home, but the officer reconsidered, and gave me another one-year visa.

Sadly it was a lone victory in a sea of frustrations. Even before I started the job, it was already taken off the “skills shortage list” for which long-term visas and possibly permanent residence could be applied , meaning if you either had a skill or were training for it and it was on that list, you might be eligible to stay longer in New Zealand

Some of the migrants in my workplace had taken advantage of the job being in the list, and that only made it more frustrating.

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For a few years, under another visa pathway towards residency, one of the requirements was that you had to earn a minimum annual income before even being considered for an invitation to apply.

For several years, I earned just below that minimum, so close and yet so far. Asking for a pay rise or better pay from my employer was out of the question as they would have to give everyone else the same benefit.

[ a couple of years later I realized even this pathway was beyond reach, as my employer was not willing to be “accredited” or registered under the rules of Immigration NZ. They were willing to hire me as a migrant, but nothing beyond that. i pass no judgment on my employer. ]

Late in the previous National government, just for the fun of it, immigration planners decided to divide migrant workers into highly skilled, midskilled and unskilled workers. Since nearly all of these workers were and are crucial to the economy, and since the perceived objective for this classification, the more efficient handling of skilled applications, became unreachable as so so many applications had since then been unprocessed anyway, I didn’t see how the classifications helped. For earning below a certain amount, you became unskilled. Earn a few cents more and you are considered skilled. How does that make sense?

So there it was, based on Murphy’s Law I became unskilled. It didn’t matter that all this time (1) there were so few qualified workers in my industry that nearly half of my colleagues were migrants or former migrants, and (2) as mentioned earlier, we were manufacturing such an important substance that we’d been working through two lockdowns, rain or shine, holidays or not.

The classification, based on “remuneration bands” became so unpopular and awkward to apply in the real world that first, such new rules were repeatedly postponed and suspended, and last I heard were going to be dropped altogether. In other words, useless. Stressed us out, and cost tens of thousands of dollars to implement and maybe so many job and visas, all for nothing.

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It didn’t matter though. It had served its purpose. since the rules for visas and permanent residency were very similar and used similar requirements, I was delayed once more in my quest to become a permanent resident.

My children, who’d become PRs because of their mother, tried to help me under a different residence category, but didn’t earn enough under the income requirements in case they needed to support me here in New Zealand. After giving me so much hope under the Parent Category, i abandoned that, too.

I finally started earning enough and got a new job (but with the same skills) with supervisory functions, just enough to be eligible under the Skilled Migrant Category. What should happen next but a global pandemic / lockdown that suspended and doomed the already handicapped functions of Immigration New Zealand, which suffered and is suffering from understaffing, inefficiency and a backlog of more than 30,000 applications.

[ with a staff of less than 150 and so much work put in to each case you do the math. Some say it will take at least a decade to process all this backlog. What about the deluge of new applications that will be submitted, waiting in the wings the last two years? ]

By this writing I have reached my 56th birthday, by which time I can no longer be eligible to apply for permanent residency.

That birthday, Kuya Noel, was my coldest day in New Zealand.

Naghihintay ng forever at umaasa sa wala

Jhun Datingaling