No Officer, Still Approved: What New Zealand's ADEPT Visa Errors Teach Careful Applicants

News · 2026-09-30 · 4 min read

You fill in the forms, upload your documents and assume a trained officer will read every page. That is not always the case, as New Zealand has just discovered. Faults in Immigration New Zealand's ADEPT platform waved through dozens of applications with no person checking them. Below is the story, plus the habits worth picking up from it if you apply for visas, employ migrant staff or are still at the planning stage.

Briefings to Immigration Minister Erica Stanford, reported by RNZ on 30 September 2026, confirm that software faults in the agency's online system let certain files through with nobody assessing them by hand.

How the System Slipped

ADEPT, the online visa processing system run by Immigration New Zealand, went live in 2022. The fault officials uncovered could make one automated process fire repeatedly on the same file. The result was duplicate actions and a skipped stage: the point where an officer should have reviewed the application.

When staff went back through the records, two groups stood out:

32 visitor visas went through without manual assessment over a period of roughly three years.
23 Job Check applications were approved in 2022 with no officer review. The Job Check is how an accredited employer shows it made an effort to recruit a New Zealander before looking overseas.

According to officials, every visitor visa in that group has since been reviewed by technical advisors. Twenty holders had already flown into the country, and nothing adverse was recorded about them. Risk factors sent six files back for a complete assessment, and the advice on one of those was to decline it.

A String of Other Faults

ADEPT has had other rough patches too:

Tuberculosis question skipped: During 2025, 364 applicants for multiple entry visitor visas aimed at parents and grandparents never saw a residency question tied to tuberculosis. Visas went to 295 of that group. In the officials' view, the risk per person was fairly low, and everyone affected was to be contacted.
Staff vanishing from dashboards: Roughly 2,300 businesses had their accreditation lapse and then renewed, and afterwards their migrant staff disappeared from view. For those firms, resending job tokens or flagging a departing worker became difficult.
Stuck drafts in August 2026: An update left some visitor visa applicants unable to send a draft once a second person had been added. Within days a permanent fix was in place; how many applicants hit the problem is not known.

People Were Supposed to Make the Hard Calls

The Government's position had been that automation would speed up approvals while only staff would turn applications down. The law already permits automated decision-making, but reportedly the agency had never switched that on, and in 2025 it estimated it was roughly two years short of the data and testing needed to do so well. So nobody planned these approvals. The software acted on its own, in a way no one intended.

Separately, the $336 million Our Future Services programme has been sent back by Ministers for a fresh business case, because its forecast savings were overstated by $134 million. A report is due to them before April 2027.

Where This Leaves You

Applicants: There is no sign that genuine applications are under threat. The issue is oversight and consistency; nobody is being wrongly turned down. Bear in mind, though, that a speedy yes is no proof of a thorough check, and errors picked up later may bring a follow-up letter or email.

Employers and sponsors: Line up what the dashboard shows against your own staff list and your record of issued job tokens. If your accreditation has lapsed and been renewed, be especially careful not to trust the screen blindly.

People still planning: Systems and policy change in every country you might go to. Keep your own file of everything you send and receive: submissions, confirmation emails, medical results and letters. If you are applying from South Africa, put certified copies of key documents in that file too (a commissioner of oaths can certify them), so a follow-up request never catches you short.

Your Online Application Routine

Save or print every page and confirmation before moving on.
Give complete answers to health and character questions, prompted or not.
Treat any request for more information as urgent.
Log in to check your status regularly; no news is not always good news.
Ask a licensed migration professional whenever something seems off.

The Bottom Line on Automation

Faster processing through technology is welcome, but it only works with proper testing and people keeping watch. On your side, the strongest defence is an honest, carefully prepared application with solid documents behind it, wherever you apply.

This is general information and not immigration advice. Rules and processes shift, so check official sources or talk to a licensed adviser first.

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