Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.
OPINION: What might be some of the immigration changes being discussed at the National-ACT-NZ First talks?
All three potential coalition partners put out immigration policies before last month’s election – it’s anyone’s guess how many of these policies will actually become law.
Here are some of the ones I like the look of:
This was included in both National and ACT’s manifestos. Both parties proposed a five-year multiple-entry visitor visa for parents of NZ citizens and residents.
National wants parents to have ‘acceptable standard of health’ and to hold medical insurance before they are approved its Parent Boost Visa, while ACT wants to charge a $3500 annual fee to cover parents’ healthcare costs while they are in New Zealand.
Whatever the final policy looks like, it will help to reunite Kiwis with their parents. Currently, overseas parents can only stay up to six months at a time on special category visitor visas, or nine months on a general visitor visa.
National plans to attract more international students by increasing the number of hours they can work each week from 20 to 24.
The National Party also plans to expand work rights for international students and their partners. This may mean relaxing Post-Study work visa requirements, so that more students qualify for open work visas once they have completed a New Zealand qualification.
I support this change – one of the best ways to recruit international students is to offer work visas after completing studies. New Zealand benefits from the tuition fees they pay (up to $50,000 a year for some post-graduate courses), as well as their later contribution to the labour market.
Potential coalition partners ACT and New Zealand First have conflicting work visa policies, neither of which is likely to come to fruition.
ACT wants to abolish labour market checks – that is, the efforts that New Zealand employers are required to make to hire New Zealanders before they can hire workers from overseas.
NZ First, on the other hand, wants to make it tougher to hire overseas workers.
It wants to replace the Accredited Employer work visa category with a Critical Skill and Labour Shortage Visa to ensure that Kiwi workers are at the front of the job queue.
ACT is unlikely to support that policy, but National may have more success convincing its coalition partners to remove the median wage requirement for most Accredited Employer work visas, or at least freezing it at the current level.
Most overseas workers need to be paid $29.66/hour to be approved Accredited Employer work visas, and this threshold is supposed to increase to $31.61/hour in February 2024 – the increase won’t be implemented, I predict.
National’s immigration policies include three new visas:
These new visas look great on paper (or electronically, if you prefer), but it remains to be seen how attractive they will be to their target audience overseas.
In the first year of these new visa categories, numbers will be capped at 250 places (Digital Nomad Visa and Global Growth Tech Visa) and 500 places (International Graduates Visa).
I don’t like the idea of NZ First’s “rural visa scheme” which obliges migrants to stay in communities of less than 100,000 residents for two years after they have been approved residence.
Can you really force people to stay in the countryside? Maybe in China in the 1960s, but not so easily in 21st century New Zealand.
Both National and ACT want to increase visa application fees the way that Uber increases its fares when everyone wants a taxi at the same time.
ACT says: “We will get rid of the complicated and burdensome system for temporary work visas and replace it with demand-based pricing, to let employers decide if their need is worth the price instead of clunky bureaucracy.”
People who are willing to pay more for their partnership residence application to be processed first will pay up to $8668, more than three times current pricing, based on National’s proposal.
Sadly, I can’t see NZ First objecting to this.
DISCLAIMER: This article does not constitute immigration advice. Individuals need to seek personal advice from a New Zealand licensed immigration adviser or lawyer to assess their unique situation. Ankur can be contacted at info@visamatters.co.nz.
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