Immigration New Zealand is aware of an IT issue where some accredited employers who have applied to renew their accreditation have not received interim accreditation as they should have.
AEWV and renewing accreditation
The Accredited Employer Work Visa is designed to ensure New Zealanders are first in line for jobs and makes it easier for employers to hire skilled migrants where genuine skill or labour shortages exist. It also helps combat migrant exploitation by ensuring only employers who are accredited can hire migrant workers. As at 2 July 2024 Immigration New Zealand (INZ) has approved 122,378 AEWV applications, and there are 35,636 accredited employers.
Employers’ first accreditation will be valid for 12 months and they need to apply to renew their accreditation before it expires.
Renew your employer accreditation
Employers affected by the IT issue
We sincerely apologise to those employers affected by this IT issue for the disruption. There are around 500 employers who have applied to renew their accreditation, and have not been granted an interim accreditation while their application is in progress.
We want to reassure employers whose accreditation has expired that they can continue to employ migrants who currently work for them on a valid visa while they are waiting for their renewal accreditation to be processed. However, they cannot submit new applications for job checks or accredited employer work visas. Any applications for job checks, and accredited employer work visas they have in progress are unable to be approved. Any approved and unused job tokens for these employers have also lapsed.
The issue is primarily affecting renewal applications made in the days immediately before the accreditation expired, and the necessary checks could not be completed to grant interim accreditation before the expiry date.
Work to resolve the issue
We are working on this as a priority. As soon as we were made aware of the issue we began working as quickly as possible to resolve this.
The IT solution has several parts which are all in development and testing. We are working at pace to have the initial solutions to issue interim accreditations to those eligible, and reinstate job tokens, operational as soon as possible.
In the meantime, any affected employers needing assistance where existing migrant workers employed may have visas expiring, or needing to urgently hire a migrant worker from overseas can contact our Customer Service Centre.
Contact us
Employers affected by this issue who need urgent assistance with an application in progress, can use the escalations process.
Escalation for urgent applications
We will continue to keep affected employers updated as we work through the issue.
