Elections and Immigration
Immigration in an Election Year: Loud Politics, Familiar Priorities
Election years are not especially relaxing, especially if your future depends on immigration policy and whether a change in Government might influence your long-term future in New Zealand. A politician gives a speech about immigration being too high, another warns that the country needs to protect its social cohesion, someone else promises a tougher system. Headlines follow, social media does what social media does, and people who are halfway through planning a move to New Zealand start wondering whether they should unpack their suitcase.
With New Zealand voting on 7 November 2026, we are firmly back in that part of the political cycle. Immigration has become noticeably louder as a campaign issue, despite the July Ipsos Issues Monitor finding that only 8 percent of New Zealanders nominated immigration as one of the country's most important issues. Cost of living was sitting at 62 percent. Healthcare was at 38 percent and the economy at 34 percent. Immigration may not be keeping most New Zealanders awake at night, but it remains remarkably capable of finding a loudspeaker with a politician attached to the end of it.
The election debate around immigration can raise legitimate questions about infrastructure, housing, wages, population growth, exploitation and how quickly a country can absorb change. Governments should be expected to answer these questions. However there is another point worth remembering, particularly if you are currently thinking about migrating here. New Zealand's political parties argue considerably more about how immigration should be controlled than they do about whether New Zealand needs immigration at all.
Look past the speeches and billboards and the country's basic requirements have been remarkably persistent. New Zealand wants people with skills it cannot readily find or produce here. It wants workers who can contribute in areas of genuine need. It wants investment and businesses that add something to the economy. It wants international education, provided the pathway has some credible relationship with skills and employment. It recognises family connections and all these other things, although politicians disagree enthusiastically about how generous those settings should be.
Volume Up
National's position is an interesting place to start because the language and the policy settings are currently pulling in slightly different directions. In May, Christopher Luxon told Auckland business leaders that immigration needed to be smart, targeted and fair. He also warned that poorly managed immigration could undermine social cohesion and said that, if forced to choose between social stability and business profitability, he would choose social stability. National has signalled further immigration policy before the election rather than, so far, releasing a comprehensive new campaign package. That sounds considerably tougher than the language businesses have become accustomed to hearing from National. Yet look at what the immigration system is actually doing under the current Government.
Hear Ye, Hear Ye
In the run up to the election, immigration often gets a lot of air time - its topical, sometimes contentious and gets attention.
On 24 August, new Skilled Migrant Category pathways took effect for experienced skilled workers and trades and technicians, explicitly designed to help employers attract and retain people with important skills. On 10 September, Immigration New Zealand confirmed broader Post-Study Work Visa eligibility from November.
The Government has also made the Active Investor Plus category substantially more attractive, with Immigration New Zealand reporting 904 applications since the revamped investor settings opened in April 2025 and almost $5 billion either committed or in the investment pipeline by early September. They have recently upgraded this to bring property investment in to the fold. In other words, a government can talk about tightening immigration while simultaneously creating better residence pathways for skilled workers, expanding graduate work rights and competing internationally for wealthy investors. Those positions are not actually contradictory. They reflect what New Zealand governments usually mean when they promise to "get immigration under control": fewer people they consider marginal to the country's needs, while trying harder to secure the people they really want.
ACT has been more explicit. Its May immigration policy called for skilled visa categories to be regularly tested against actual labour demand, a five-year welfare stand-down for new residents, stronger enforcement against overstayers and tougher deportation settings for serious offenders. More recently, ACT proposed physical-presence requirements for permanent residents. The rhetoric is deliberately firm, but ACT's policy begins from the position that immigration has enriched New Zealand and that migrants should continue to be welcomed where they contribute and comply with the rules.
New Zealand First occupies the harder end of the debate. Winston Peters has argued that overall migration is too high, strongly criticised the immigration provisions associated with the New Zealand-India Free Trade Agreement and repeatedly returned to the formulation that New Zealand should bring in people "we need", rather than people "who need us". The party has also proposed restricting voting rights to citizens rather than permanent residents. Yet even New Zealand First's position starts with an acknowledgement that New Zealand needs immigration. Its argument is about scale, selection and the obligations placed on migrants once they are here.
The India FTA has provided particularly fertile ground for election-year debate. New Zealand First has warned of much larger migration consequences, while the Government says the agreement provides the equivalent of 1,667 three-year temporary employment visas annually, capped at 5,000 at any one time. Most of those places are connected to skilled occupations already drawn from Green List shortage areas. Whatever position one takes on the agreement, the dispute itself tells us something useful: even an argument presented as being about excessive immigration quickly becomes an argument about which workers New Zealand needs and under what conditions they should enter.
The Greens are coming from almost the opposite direction. Their 2026 manifesto proposes more accessible residence pathways for long-term migrants, greater freedom for migrant workers to change employers, broader family reunification, removal of the Acceptable Standard of Health requirements and a progressive increase in the refugee quota to 5,000 by 2029. There is clearly a major philosophical divide between that approach and the positions being advanced by ACT or New Zealand First, particularly around enforcement, health requirements and the rights attached to residence. There is not, however, a debate about whether migrants have a continuing place in New Zealand society.
Labour, at the time of writing, has not released a specific 2026 election immigration package. Its political response has instead concentrated on accusing the coalition parties of adopting unnecessarily divisive anti-migrant rhetoric. Labour has also opposed parts of the Government's Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill while expressly supporting the need for a robust, efficient and well-managed immigration system. Te Pāti Māori likewise had not released a specific 2026 immigration policy at the latest published cross-party review.
There are obviously real differences between these positions, and pretending otherwise would not help anyone making serious decisions about their future. Partner rights, parent categories, health requirements, welfare access, pathways from temporary visas to residence, labour-market testing and enforcement settings can all change materially depending on who forms a government.
What tends to change rather less is New Zealand's appetite for people who clearly meet an economic or social need.
Been Here Before
None of this began in 2026. Modern New Zealand immigration policy has been built around selection according to contribution for almost forty years. The Immigration Act 1987 marked a decisive move away from selecting migrants by nationality or ethnic origin and towards skills, business capability, family and humanitarian considerations. National's 1991 reforms then introduced a points system based on factors including employability, age, qualifications and available funds. The mechanics have been rebuilt repeatedly since, but the central question has remained surprisingly durable: what does this person bring to New Zealand?
We should not romanticise the history. Immigration politics in New Zealand has periodically crossed the line from legitimate debate about numbers and infrastructure into ethnic scapegoating. Anti-Asian political rhetoric was particularly prominent during parts of the 1990s and 2000s, just as Pacific communities had borne the brunt of immigration enforcement and political anxiety in earlier decades. Some of the language used during the current campaign has again drawn accusations of racism and deliberate attempts to inflame concern about particular migrant communities. A sensible immigration debate does not require pretending that every version of that debate has been sensible. The more recent election cycles are particularly revealing.
Circling Back
The hype around immigration, coinciding with elections is nothing new, and likely to be a key feature of elections in to the future.
In 2017, annual net migration was around 72,000 and immigration became a major election issue. Labour promised to reduce net migration by roughly 20,000 to 30,000 a year. New Zealand First wanted it below 10,000. National had already tightened settings for lower-paid workers while continuing to argue that employers needed access to overseas labour. Labour itself was simultaneously proposing an Exceptional Skills Visa and a construction-related visa because reducing immigration apparently did not extend to reducing the immigration the country actually needed.
After the election, New Zealand First's much lower migration target did not become government policy. The coalition settled around Labour's position instead. That is worth remembering whenever a party policy is reported as though it is already sitting in an Immigration New Zealand operations manual. Under MMP, election policies are also negotiating positions, and some survive coalition talks considerably better than others.
Then COVID arrived and rendered most immigration targets temporarily academic. By the 2020 election the border was largely closed, yet the same underlying preferences were already visible. Labour talked about creating space for skilled workers and investors. National proposed a technology visa and faster routes for overseas investors and entrepreneurs. ACT talked about attracting "extraordinarily skilled people, investors and other productive individuals". Even New Zealand First, while saying mass migration should remain in the past, argued that New Zealand should bring in people it desperately needed. The Greens focused more heavily on migrant rights, residence pathways and family categories.
Te Pāti Māori took a markedly different position in 2020 and proposed halting immigration until housing supply caught up with demand. That illustrates why individual policy proposals should certainly be taken seriously. It also illustrates why they should not automatically be mistaken for future law.
Perhaps the clearest example of political rhetoric colliding with practical necessity came immediately afterwards. In 2021, the Labour Government created the one-off 2021 Resident Visa to provide certainty to migrant families and retain workers needed for the economic recovery. Immigration New Zealand ultimately approved more than 212,000 people for residence through that policy. A party elected four years earlier promising a substantial reduction in migration ended up granting one of the largest residence programmes in New Zealand's modern history because circumstances had changed and the economy required a different response.
By 2023 the pendulum had swung again. Net migration was high, the Accredited Employer Work Visa had generated serious exploitation concerns and parties returned to promising reform. Yet National, Labour and ACT all campaigned on versions of longer-term visas for migrants' parents or grandparents. National's justification was particularly telling: if New Zealand wanted to attract and retain skilled migrants, family settings had to make the country internationally competitive. ACT wanted Green List occupations to have easier residence pathways. New Zealand First wanted the AEWV replaced with visas specifically targeted at critical skills and labour shortages. Labour, while in government, was expanding Green List occupations and implementing a simplified Skilled Migrant Category.
Different parties, different branding, different thresholds and occasionally very different values. Yet underneath it sits the same stubborn reality that successive governments discover once the campaign posters come down. New Zealand has a small population, persistent skills shortages, an ageing population, industries dependent on international labour, universities dependent on international students and an economy that actively competes with Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and others for talent and capital. Political rhetoric cannot unwind or risk ignoring those facts.
How Nervous Should You Be?
Anyone considering a move to New Zealand should follow election policy closely, because governments do change immigration rules and occasionally change them significantly. A person sitting comfortably inside one residence pathway today can find the qualification, occupation or wage settings altered later. Temporary workers can be particularly exposed because their ability to remain in New Zealand often depends on policy continuing to provide the next step.
It helps to separate political rhetoric, party policy and actual immigration instructions. They are not the same thing. A speech can suggest where a party wants to go. A manifesto provides more detail. A coalition agreement may change it again. Cabinet decisions, immigration instructions and legislation are what eventually determine whether your application succeeds.
For people New Zealand consistently competes to attract, the long-term picture is less volatile than election coverage sometimes suggests. Governments of different political colours have continued to seek experienced professionals, healthcare workers, tradespeople, technical workers, investors, entrepreneurs and people capable of filling genuine labour and skills gaps. They have repeatedly adjusted settings to retain valuable migrants when New Zealand risks losing them overseas. Even family policies are increasingly discussed partly through the lens of whether New Zealand can remain competitive for skilled migrants.
What normally happens is more mundane. Governments change the filters. They argue about who gets through them, how quickly, what obligations should apply and how much immigration is sustainable. They rename visas with impressive enthusiasm. Then employers discover they still cannot find enough nurses, engineers, tradespeople, teachers or specialist staff, universities remember that international students are economically useful, businesses ask for better access to talent, and somebody in Wellington begins designing another pathway.
For prospective migrants, the sensible response is therefore to work with the rules that actually exist, understand where your strategy may be exposed to change and avoid making major decisions based solely on the loudest comment of the week.
Election campaigns create noise. Immigration policy does change. However across decades and governments, New Zealand has remained remarkably consistent about wanting people who can genuinely contribute to the country. In all my many years of doing this, a very similar profile of applicant has remained the goal and I dont expect that to dramatically change.
If that describes you, there is usually far more value in getting the strategy right than in trying to predict every headline between now and polling day.
Until next week.
