HOW TO SEARCH


The Search for Decisions page provides four ways to search for decisions on the Board's database.  The four ways, which are detailed below, are:



Detailed Search    |    Precedent Finder   |   Decision Finder   |   Most Searched Terms

Detailed Search

This is the main search engine. It's the most flexible way of searching for what you want. You can use the drop-down menus to focus your search as much as possible and combine this with your search terms.

The drop-down menus search the 'fields' of the abstracts, so that you can be certain that what you select is accurate and comprehensive. Say, for example, you want to see all decisions relating to the United Kingdom. It won't matter if the decisions referred to “United Kingdom” or "Great Britain”. All variations will be found.


Frequently asked questions:
                          

How do I make the best use of the drop-down menus?

SEARCH gives you drop-down menus which will narrow your search, especially when you use them in conjunction with the 'search terms' box. New drop-down menus will be added as they are developed.

 

Under 'Decision Date'  how widely does the 'around' feature search?

A month or year either side of the month or year you select. So "2002" will search all decisions published from 2001 to 2003.



In the “Outcome” drop-down, what do the statutory references mean?

See the “Appeal Decision” section of the FAQs for an explanation of the different appeal outcomes.


What are the “Category” drop-down and the “Policy Provision” boxes?

Government residence policy is divided into categories. Those categories are listed in the “Category” drop-down menu. Selecting a category will return all decisions concerning that category of policy.

Within these categories are the numbered policy provisions. For example, within the Family stream:

Family (Spouse or Partnership) category = policy provisions prefixed F2
Family (Parent) category = policy provisions prefixed F4
Family (Dependent Child) category = policy provisions prefixed F5
Family (Sibling and Adult Child) category = policy provisions prefixed F6

If you know the number of the policy provision you wish to do a search on, it can be typed into the “Policy Provision” box. This function also allows you to search on a policy provision from a different category to the one entered into the “Category” drop-down menu. For example, if you select “Family (Parent)” as the policy category and enter A4 into the policy provision box, the search will return all decisions from the Family (Parent) category in which Health Requirements policy was considered. Note that entering “A4” into the policy provision box will retrieve all decisions containing policy provisions that begin with “A4”, for example A4.1, A4.5, A4.10, A4.10.1 etc.

If you know the type of policy provision you wish to do a search on but are uncertain of the policy number, you can click on the “List of Provisions” button which will take you to a list of provisions of Government residence policy together with the titles of the provisions. The provisions for which there are published decisions are underlined and in grey. Clicking on these policy provision links will take you to all the published decisions in which that provision was considered.

Above the list of policy provisions, the most frequently searched for provisions are displayed in green. Clicking on any of the green links to a category or policy provision will take you to the relevant category/policy provision in the list.

Government residence policy is available online through www.immigration.govt.nz. Please bear in mind, however, that because Government residence policy changes from time to time the policy may have changed since it was considered in a decision of the Board. Therefore, it is important to check whether the effective date of current policy has changed from the effective date of the policy in the Board's decision.


“Section of Act” – where can I find the Immigration Act 1987?

You can access the Immigration Act 1987 through the Public Access to Legislation website at www.legislation.govt.nz. See the “Links” section for more information.


What is a "Cited Court Decision"?

A "Cited Court Decision" is a decision of the High Court or Court of Appeal that is referred to in a decision of the Board.

How do I best use the 'search terms' box?

The search terms box is where you type in any specific words you're wanting to find (it searches both the abstracts and the full-texts simultaneously).

Searching for more than one word is best done using some simple Boolean logic:

•  Two or more words are treated as a phrase. The search will look for exactly what you typed, eg jelly beans.

•  If you want to search for documents that contain the two terms, but not as a phrase, then you must type
    jelly AND beans.

•  The search understands "AND NOT" and "OR" and excludes them from phrases - eg jelly AND NOT beans.

•  The search assumes that "AND" is more important to the logic of the search than "OR" or "NOT". For example,
    typing in jelly and beans or roll is interpreted as (jelly AND beans) OR roll.

•  Brackets can be used to structure a Boolean search - but they must have a space before and after them -
    otherwise they will be treated as special characters and ignored.


Case-sensitivity, punctuation & special characters:

•  Searches are not case-sensitive - typing jelly, Jelly or JELLY will all produce the same results.

•  Punctuation or special characters (eg quotation marks etc) will normally force the expression to be treated
   as a phrase eg; "2(d)", "people's". 

•  One very handy exception is the wild-card character * - jelly AND be* will look for anything containing both
    jelly and any words beginning be (eg beans, beetle, bed etc). Wild card characters are best used at the end
    of a single word rather than a phrase.

•  Wild-card characters can be especially useful for finding words containing quote marks (eg shi'a) or accented
    characters.

•  The other exception is joining words with hyphens (-) eg well-settled - this is understood by the search engine
    to mean both well-settled and well settled. So, if you're not sure if a hyphen should be there, put it in and the
    search engine will know to look in the right place whether it's there or not.


Can I search by an appellant's name?

No. All of the Board's decisions are depersonalised prior to publication. You will not find the names of appellants here at all.



Precedent Finder

At the left of the page, PRECEDENT FINDER enables you to search by topic. This is a fast way to access the decisions we think will most help you to understand the Board's approach to a particular topic.

Remember though - PRECEDENT FINDER is not meant to be exhaustive. It won't locate all the decisions on a topic - just the ones which are most likely to be helpful. To find all decisions on a topic enter the relevant words in the 'search terms' box using the main SEARCH feature.



Decision Finder

Enter the number of the decision you want to find.


Frequently asked questions:


Under your old search engine I had to put AAS before the number. Do I still need to do this?

No. The Residence Appeal number alone is sufficient.


I put in a number but I didn't get any result. What happened?

It might be because there hasn't been a decision using that number - sometimes, for example, an appeal gets withdrawn and so the numbering sequence has some gaps. Or rarely it might be because the decision is not available to the public.

Prior to January 2006 only a selection of decisions were published, so most decisions from this period will not be available on the website. From 1 January 2006 all decisions will be published, except those few not made publicly available for confidentiality and privacy reasons.

 

Most Searched Terms

This page can be used as a shortcut way to search using terms that have been popular with other users.

 

Search Results


Your results will appear as a list of decision numbers with each one having an abstract, a .pdf full-text decision and an .html full-text decision.


Frequently asked questions:

What is an abstract?

An abstract is a short summary of a decision, which records the essential details, such as the policy category, country and outcome. It also includes a short summary of the facts and the reasoning for the decision. It is a handy way to get an overview of a decision very quickly.

Why a .pdf copy and an .html copy of every decision?

We provide both copies as not only do e-government guidelines require us to provide both, but there are advantages to each format type.

The .pdf file will take a little longer to load but will give you the decision exactly as it appeared when published in hard copy. Think of a .pdf file as being like a photograph of each page. This is especially useful for decisions written before we introduced paragraph numbering, because it allows you to find page numbers, which an .html file will not.  The .pdf files are also useful because they cannot be changed. If you want to print off a copy of a decision we strongly recommend you print off the .pdf file.

The .html copies will load more quickly and are useful for 'copying and pasting', if you wish to quote from a decision. They do not, however, always hold the formatting of older decisions correctly and the page numbering of the original hard copy is lost, because an .html file shows as one long 'page'.

 

I am having trouble opening the .pdf documents

Click on this link for assistance Opening Documents


I've got my results. Can I get more (or less) detail for each abstract you have shown me?

Simply click on the option at top left to select increasing amounts of detail (more index terms) - but remember - the more you have, the fewer records can be shown on the page without the need to scroll down. You can select the format which suits your needs.

Conversely, if you want to print a list of decisions, you can reduce the number of screen pages you need to print by selecting fewer terms.


I notice the results are given in date order - with the most recent at the top. Can I view the results any other way?

Yes. You'll see that all results found using the 'search terms' box are given a number of ••• as a ranking system. The more often your search term appears in a decision, the more dots it is given. You can choose to have your results sorted by this ranking system if you wish (you will need to re-select the option each time you get new search results).