We are not making the most of NZ as a place to study, says Luella Bartlett.
It all sounds like something out of the 1970s. An exporter delivers a shipment of premium quality wool or fine wine to the port ready for shipment, but the officials hold things up for five months while the paperwork gets done.
Orders are cancelled, customers buy from other countries that do their paperwork within a day, the country loses precious export earnings, and Kiwi jobs are in jeopardy.
And the official explanation? Not enough staff to run an office where the desks are piled high with forms waiting to be processed.
Strange as it may seem in 2009, this has been the case in parts of one of our most valuable markets: export education, and specifically the Indian market.
Indian students have waited up to five months to get confirmation of a student visa, despite having already been accepted for courses of study in New Zealand, and therefore having a "positive profile" for immigration purposes.
The same task is completed by the British and Australian immigration bureaucracies (despite their heightened level of concern about security) in one and two weeks respectively.
Both countries also have an "authorised agent" system, which offers approvals of visas online within 24 hours (for Britain) or six hours (for Australia).
Not surprisingly, many Indian students lose patience and opt to study in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States.
Others, often on advice from local education placement consultants, bypass New Zealand altogether.
It comes as no surprise to learn that our system remains largely paper-based, when e-visas are the norm for the developed world.
In recent months our Immigration Service has managed to speed up the process to enable approval within six weeks. However, this does little for our ranking within the pack. Our slow processing time is putting a cap on growth in the Indian market which is worth $200 million a year to New Zealand.
Of the 85,000 foreign students in this country, only 6000 are from India.
But this represents an increase of 42 per cent on the year 2007-08, and there are no signs of demand slowing. Each of those students brings, on average, $33,000 into the economy, rather more than people here on a tourist visa.
Like students from other countries, Indians are coming for a wide range of educational qualifications. Providers attract foreign students to any high-quality tertiary training in professional skills for which there is a global market.
At the Professional Bar and Restaurant School, a private training establishment based in Auckland and Wellington and focusing on training high-end front-of-house staff, much of the growth in our business has been international students seeking work in the burgeoning global hospitality industry.
The National Government has recently taken some steps to improve things. The Immigration Service is giving priority to processing for student visas from India, and an additional $1.45 million has been allocated for promotion of New Zealand education providers in key markets.
Education Minister Anne Tolley has said that she is keen to work with the sector to help develop international education.
That is a sensible move given its value. India is one of the fastest-growing markets in an industry that brings in $2.1 billion in export revenue a year, of which $600 million is in fees, and more still in what foreign students spend on living expenses and on spin-off benefits such as bringing families here for graduation. The industry supports 32,000 jobs.
But a more aggressive performance target would yield even greater benefits
New Zealand exporters have learned that, as a small nation, we need to match our competitors and then go one better.
Looked at in this way, if each Indian student generates $33,000 of economic benefit then $1 million spent on improving visa processing times would have paid for itself once 30 extra students chose this country.
What is more, we risk our reputation in other markets, such as Korea and Vietnam.
There are good reasons to be cautious about granting student visas and the system has been abused by those seeking a back door to permanent residency.
But once basic safeguards are used to filter out abusers, those applying to study here are overwhelmingly hard-working, ambitious people prepared to invest in our institutions. The Government has said that removing unnecessary barriers to students is a high priority and has taken some steps in the right direction.
But more action is needed, and fast.
* Luella Bartlett is co-managing director of the Professional Bar and Restaurant School.
