Uneasy Pills – Rantings of a lost ID.iot

update below:

Having an interesting day today..

Arrived at our internarional airport this morning to pickup a traveling international model, but it seems that good old New Zealand Airport Immigration are making things difficult.

So as I’m a nice guy and like to help…

I’ve talked to two different immigration agents on the phone.. (both times they called me by getting my number from the person in question, no probllem with that) … it seems that neither share a brain cell between them.. though in saying that, the second one (sounded like an English accent) was somewhat more polite than the first one who was just plain rude.

The first one rang and left a message ( I was driving so didn’t answer my mobile… arn’t I good) and then she took about 2 hours to ring back…. When she did.. she said she’d call back in two minutes (I just pulled into the car park and was parking)…. she never did… (and she was just as rude again) …

The second lady rang about 30 minutes after i parked…so much for 2 minutes….. we had a general conversation… like who am I.. how do I know the person in question. . Do I know what they will be doing while in NZ, etc etc .. all the usual questions.. then she cut me off and hung up the call… so with no way to contact them back… I dunno what else to do.  The Immigration office here at the airport is closed… no number to ring and no agents to ask……    

I really do feel sorry for people coming to NZ … I understand immigration have a important job to do… but they don’t have to be fuck witted assholes about it… or maybe it’s part of the job requirement.. “oh you want to work as an immigration officer…sure… can you be a fuck witted asshole.. just like John Key?…you can.. excellent. . Welcome to your new job..” …  .. (.. ypu may ask.. who is John Key.. He is the current New Zealand Prime Minister .. who does very dodgy things…very very.. Google him)…

That attitude does more damage to the reputation of NZ than 1000 good reviews could do to support it especially when it happens to people working in media .. bad press and word of mouth travels fast in a small community …. there’s just no escaping it.

Now to be fair… I do only have (at this stage) 1/3 of the story…. and all I can do now is go do my usual stuff and wait to see if the person in question is allowed to enter New Zealand or not….    If so I’ll be sure to update this blog with more information. … If not.l, then I can only wait for an email from them when they return home (I assume).

Either way.. it’s lunchtime and I’m hungry and I’ve been here since 7 am.

More as I learn more.

:p

UPDATE:

So after a 4 hours, I get a text from the person in question, who is now been declined a visa to visit NZ.

After a bit of text chat, we find that she had the same experience as i did with the Immigration agent, finding her to be very rude.

I’ve gone ahead and managed to find a contact number for immigration via the airport, which was a headache as Immigration seem to really want to be uncontactable, i had to be somewhat rude to the airport operator to actually get them to transfer me, as they kept saying “Oh we can’t put you though , they don’t have a number “ … unbelievable.. because they did have a number…. obviously… 

I spoke with a guy about the situation and he was polite but absolutely unhelpful, unwilling to make any sort of effort to assist (easy to tell by his accent he wasn’t kiwi born), often going back to the “we can’t discuss this unless we have permission from the person in question” who has given their permission already because immigration had already called me twice….

This is truly terrible that Immigration have yet again shown themselves as total uncaring assholes , nothing seems to change, and I truly feel sorry for any international traveler coming to NZ that has to deal with those idiots.

Well done New Zealand Immigration, yet again , you’ve proved your self to be a pack of mindless drones with no ability to think for yourself or help anyone… fucking well done.

(a backstory note)..

Just so you know that i’m not dealing with a one-off here.. I have experience with NZ Immigration and how they treat people, as I have a number of international friends, some who live/ work here, some who are students etc.. and I constantly hear horror stories about how they are treated by NZ Immigration, and i’ve even tried to help a couple of them and have experienced this first hand….   it’s a hard thing to do, to try and be there for someone who gets shafted by immigration and watch them as they see their life and what they have worked hard for (legally) get torn apart by an uncaring emotionally void asshole at immigration. 

Rant end.