You might be wondering what the connection between visas, politics and butter chicken could possibly be, although if you are already in New Zealand, those dots might join up a little quicker. For those of you who aren’t or at least don’t follow our mainstream media here, the link is all thanks to one of our more vocal politicians - the Honourable Shane Jones.

Known for his ability to provoke and to deliver his opinions fairly bluntly, Mr. Jones recently compared our soon to be signed, free-trade deal with India, as a "butter chicken tsunami" making its way to New Zealand. The provocative imagery being his rather creative (and poorly chosen) way of raising concerns around the visa and immigration components of that free-trade deal. Like most free trade deals we sign, the movement of people and access to visas, for the partner country, is a part of the negotiations.

Scroll through Facebook, YouTube or Instagram for long enough and you will find someone confidently explaining how to get a New Zealand visa. Often it is delivered in 60 seconds, wrapped in certainty, covered in shiny badges, and backed by a comment section full of people saying “this worked for me”.

There might even be some pretty credible claims of “expertise”, a selfie or two with a politician or even some fancy badges or self-ordained titles. It is quick, accessible and, on the surface, incredibly reassuring - particularly when you are considering how to map out your future life in a new country.

We are receiving a growing number of requests from applicants already in New Zealand, holding Work Visas who are now approaching their timeline to apply for residence. Many of these are people with degrees, looking to now apply under the points system, having accumulated three years of experience or those, gearing up to apply under the new work experience pathway being introduced in August 2026.

These applicants are moving ahead, based on the assumption that the role they hold, as it was assessed for their Work Visa is sufficiently skilled to qualify for residence. That is a pretty logical assumption for most applicants to make. It the position was assessed at a particularly skill level for the Work Visa, which in turn enabled them to bring their family and to secure five year long visas, then surely that same assessment of skill will apply when they submit their application for residence.

I often explain to the many potential migrants that I speak with, that our immigration system, whilst it might look complex from the outside, can be easily broken down in to three separate “streams” - one for family, one for business and the one for skills. Those three rivers of eligibility flow into a small ocean of residence pathways and while there are different categories within each pathway, they all add up to achieving the same end goal for New Zealand as a country.

We have a social obligation to grant visas to family members (in various forms), we want to attract investment and entrepreneurial skills, and then we want to bring in skills that will supplement and also reinforce our labour market. Over time we have adjusted how each of these three streams flows in to that ocean, more specifically in terms of the investment and skills pathways, with a view to securing the right mix, of the right people.

For years, New Zealand has traded on our success with the Lord of the Rings and then The Hobbit movie franchises, in many ways, because what we had to offer in terms of scenery and landscapes was depicted (fairly accurately) in those films.

Okay, we don’t have hobbits or dragons, but there was a certain romanticism behind a far away land, with snow covered mountains, dense, rich forests and unchartered landscapes. Ironically however our location is quite a few leagues away from “Middle Earth” and the matter of geography can be a pretty important part of a potential migrants decision to move.

Migrants move for so many different reasons - some come in search of safety and security, others move to be close to family and some head in our direction for the lifestyle we can offer. Among all of those motivations comes a degree of expectation - New Zealand will hopefully offer the prospective migrant something better than they have or perhaps something different.

I was reminded of how important those expectations can be, through a thoughtful piece provided to me by someone who is also considering the move here from the United States. Having travelled here for a short visit, to get a feel for the country, on his return he provided me with a very balanced appraisal of both the good and the bad that New Zealand might have to offer. As a local, it was initially confronting, but in that, it was also very fair, balanced and accurate.

When the Auckland Harbour Bridge opened in 1959, it had four lanes, servicing a population of around 430,000 people. Vehicle ownership was vastly different to what it is now and at the time, four lanes seemed to make sense. Within a decade of the bridge opening it became very obvious that it was already under strain. Traffic volumes had increased dramatically and the original design simply wasn’t enough to cope with that increasing demand.

So engineers did what engineers often do when faced with a practical problem. Instead of replacing the structure entirely which would have come at huge expense or adding a second crossing (something being heavily debated and discussed now), they bolted additional lanes onto the sides in the late 1960s. These became known as the “clip-ons”. These additional lanes, doubled the capacity from four lanes to eight.

The bridge worked again. At least for a while.

In September of 2025, the Government announced big changes to the Skilled Migrant Category (SMC), due to be rolled out almost 12 months later in August 2026 (we wrote about it here).

In that announcement, the Government proposed two new SMC pathways, changes to how the median wage would be calculated for SMC applicants and then also the potential of new Amber and Red lists - lists of occupations that require additional criteria to be met, in order to qualify under these new pathways or excluding them entirely.

This weeks article is inspired by a discussion I had (albeit brief) with an employer via LinkedIn…and when I say discussion, I mean, my comments on one of their posts which resulted in a back and forth exchange related to the visa process.

The original post was from a small NZ business, working in the agricultural tech space, looking to bring someone in from overseas. It was common of a number of posts, where employers have embarked on the visa process, assuming its just an online thing, but then hitting the reality of how complex and specific it can actually be.

It almost feels normal to start off your blog post with a disclaimer that this was not written by AI, but by a human being, tapping away at a keyboard (which it was). I can however appreciate the potential irony in a post about AI replacing my job, being written by…AI. When I last wrote about this topic, AI was a website that people used to help them answer questions - in a relatively short space of time, AI has developed its own social network, is producing videos indistinguishable from live action and occupies 75% of the online influence marketing selling products.

AI has literally worked its way in to almost everything we do and continues to do so, day by day, hour by hour. In fact by the time I written this, something new will have surfaced in the AI space.

Immigration is essentially all about consequences - the most significant of which being the outcome of an application for a visa - approved or declined. Those consequences however, can and do change lives forever.

Whilst most consequences are planned events and if done right they are successful, however not all consequences in this process are intentional. There are things that can cause the trajectory of an application to shift dramatically, some of them based on simple mistakes by applicants and others, by the design of the very rules they are relying on to apply.

The countdown is on - in nine months time, the New Zealand voting population will be heading to polling booths, to cast their vote for who gets a shot at running the country for the following three years. As the campaigning starts to heat up, immigration will play an ever increasing role in each parties policy positions.

Immigration is almost always a headline issue in election season, given it sits right at the crossroads of workforce needs, housing and infrastructure pressure, international education, and the simple reality that New Zealand relies on migrants more than the general public sometimes like to admit. Elections have a habit of bringing those details to light, both positively and negatively.

For many Americans, the idea of living outside the United States has been a quiet, recurring conversation rather than a concrete plan.

It comes up around election cycles, after major global events, during moments of burnout or when reflecting on what kind of future they want for their children. Often, the conclusion has been the same: interesting idea, but not now.

More recently however those abstract conversations have turned in to action and its not just the wealthy, looking to secure a future insurance policy.

I am covering some old ground in this week’s article as I have discussed Student Visas before, however with the new year upon us and big changes coming to our SMC program that bring certain NZ qualifications in to the spotlight, I thought it was worth revisiting.

Student Visas are a mixed bag - some applicants simply want to study here, secure a great education in another country and then take their skills back home. For some studying in NZ is financially more viable than studying at home or the opportunity to attend a good university here is far easier than trying to compete in their own education sector…

2026 officially started for us on 12 January with the team arriving back from the summer holidays, although admittedly there was a bit of work done over the break as well.

If the first few days of our return to the office are anything to go by, 2026 is shaping up to be a very busy year and with the new SMC rules being introduced in August of this year, the opportunities exist for a much bigger pool of migrants to make the move here.

It’s almost time to turn off the screens, pack up the keyboard and head home for the holidays - which for most of us in NZ means some time at the beach after time with family over a good Christmas lunch. New Zealand does tend to pretty much shut down over the break, although in more recent years plenty of people are heading back to the daily grind a little sooner.

For us, we will be closing down on 23 December, and heading back to the office on 12 January. INZ will be closed from 24 December and then slowly opening back up from 05 January, although not with a full staff complement from day one.

Migrating with children, particularly when you have a blended family or even if you are a single parent can be complex, not only because of all the logistics involved, but because there are very specific legalities tied to the visa process, for you and those children. INZ has a fairly complicated set of rules when it comes the evidence and information required for children, whose parents are divorced, separated, never married or even where one parent is simply not migrating (yes it happens).

Those requirements can become very onerous, if you haven’t worked them out at the start of the process and even if you have, INZ can still make things challenging depending on the country you are coming from and the variety of information that might be available. We deal with this regularly and INZ’s requirements, while logical, in terms of protecting the rights of children and parents, can often be archaic or out of step with how the world operates.

Every few weeks (or even days), another global headline reminds us how unpredictable the world has become. The latest example comes from the U.S., where a tragic shooting involving National Guard members immediately ignited calls for sweeping immigration crackdowns.

This sits alongside already heavy crackdowns on migration across the U.S., including the deployment of ICE raids, raising fees for skilled work visa applicants and an increased focus on slowing down border movements. The U.S. has also recently banned visa applications from various high risk countries.

It was inevitable that AI and tools like ChatGPT or Co-Pilot would start to become the “go to” sources for many people considering a move to another country - after all if you can find out what to make for dinner, with the five things you have left in your fridge, using AI, why couldn’t it also tell you whether or not you might qualify for a visa and then by extension how to get it.

There is also a proliferation of companies now trying to sell the “AI Visa” solution, attempting to give people access to a platform that will tell them if they qualify, what visa they might qualify for and then how to go about applying for that visa - again an inevitable consequence of our sudden need to do everything with AI.

At some point in the last few years (and probably due to the pandemic that we dare not speak the name of), our Government became fixated on giving everything a colour coding system, based on traffic lights. I guess its a pretty familiar concept and if the light is green, its all go, if its amber, exercise caution and if its red forget about it.

The same colour scheme we use to direct traffic or previously used to determine if we could leave the house, has also been adopted in to our immigration system, starting with the “Green List” and soon to be complimented by the “Amber” and “Red” lists to make the complete set.