The laws and other rules that will be relevant for any immigration issue you might have are found in a number of places:
Immigration laws – The Immigration Act 2009 and various sets of immigration regulations contain the key laws dealing with coming to New Zealand and staying here. However, these usually don’t set out the specific requirements for getting a particular type of visa – those requirements are usually contained in policies made by the government (see below). The immigration laws deal mostly with the processes for making decisions and with issues like what appeal rights you might have if you want to challenge one of Immigration New Zealand’s decisions.
Immigration policies – Many of the key immigration rules that will affect you, including the grounds on which Immigration New Zealand will decide whether or not to grant you a visa, are contained in government policies – which the Immigration Act calls “instructions”. Policies can be changed much more easily and more often than laws. You can read these policies in Immigration NZ’s “Operational Manual” (see below). If the legal reference we give in this chapter for a particular rule is for the Operational Manual, rather than to the Immigration Act or immigration regulations, you’ll know that the rule is based on government policy, not laws made by Parliament.
Finding specific Immigration NZ policies in their Operational Manual
The immigration laws allow the government to put their specific immigration policies into the form of “Instructions”. Immigration New Zealand publishes these instructions in its Operational Manual, which it makes available on its website at www.immigration.govt.nz/opsmanual.
Any particular rule in the Manual will have a reference number like “V3.10” or “SM14”, with the letters (here, “V” and “SM”) indicating what the topic is. “V3.10”, for example, is about “Visitor Visas”, in the part of the Manual called “Temporary Entry”.