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Citizenship/INZ Entitlement to Reside Programme
Annual Report
Purpose: To identify and remove from the Immigration New Zealand (INZ) overstayer records the names of people who have been granted New Zealand citizenship.
Year commenced: 2004
Features: Data transferred every six months by CD.
Citizenship disclosure to INZ: Citizenship provides information from the Citizenship Register about people who have been granted citizenship. Each record includes full name, gender, date of birth, country of birth and Citizenship person number.
2010/11 activity:
| Match runs | 3 |
| Records received for matching | 1,135,611 |
| Possible matches identified | 2,848 |
| Number of NZ citizens removed from the overstayer list | 373 |
Commentary: In each of the last four years INZ has performed two match runs to cover grants of citizenship in the current period, and one match run to cover historical records previously received in earlier matches. The purpose of processing citizenship records previously received is to identify individuals who continue to travel using their non-New Zealand passport.
When returning to New Zealand using their non-New Zealand passport, Immigration officials do not know that these individuals have been granted citizenship, and have to grant a temporary visa based on the passport presented. The historical match allows Immigration to re-identify these individuals, and remove them as temporary visa holders in INZ's records
Compliance: Compliant.
Technical information
| Information matching provision | Citizenship Act 1977, s.26A |
| Year authorised | 2001 |
| Programme type | Updating data |
| Unique identifiers | DIA's Citizenship number |
System description
Twice a year, the NZ citizenship office provides INZ with an encrypted CD of citizenship records for individuals who have been granted New Zealand citizenship during the six months prior to the extraction date. Each citizenship record includes the full name, gender, date of birth, country of birth, and citizenship person number.
INZ compares the citizenship information with information it holds about overstayers.
The matching process uses up to seven matching cycles in which the matching criteria are gradually widened to allow for less exact match results to be considered. The match results are written to a match extract report which INZ staff review before accepting or rejecting each match result. No notices of adverse action (s.103) are sent out because individuals matched successfully benefit from being removed from the overstayers' register and unsuccessful matches do not give rise to any adverse action.
Historical activity
| 2005/06 | 2006/07 | 2007/08 | 2008/09 | 2009/10 | |
| Match runs | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Records compared | 225,287 | 87,449 | 940,210 | 1,013,867 | 1,075,685 |
| Useable matches | 1,216 | 579 | 3,101 | 2,663 | 2,468 |
| NZ citizen records removed from the overstayers list |
466 | 261 | 835 | 428 | 387 |