2016-Jul 22: Offshore Student Advisers

Visa Pak 269 - Guidance about the limitations of offshore unlicensed student advisers.

Visa Paks

22 July 2016

Offshore Student Advisers

Operations Support has been asked to provide some guidance around the limitations of offshore unlicensed student advisers.

People who are based in New Zealand and travel offshore to provide advice on student visa applications are covered, while offshore, by the exemption in section 11(h) of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007. In practice this means that the person must be physically offshore when they provide advice on student visas and they cannot provide advice on other types of visa applications, such as work or visitor visas. When the unlicensed person is in New Zealand they cannot give any immigration advice on any visa type (unless they are exempted from being licensed by another part of section 11) even if they are claiming to only be repeating the advice they gave while they were offshore.

The key to this exemption is the location of the adviser and not the student so an unlicensed adviser who is physically offshore could provide advice on student visas for a student who is onshore.

Action

Please discuss with your team(s).