If you sniff around the multitude of social media posts and groups, discussing how a move to New Zealand might work, you will find an unlimited number of guides on how to speak “Kiwi”, why we consider fish and chips (pronounced “fush and chups”), the national dish and a complete history on the trans-Tasman feud over a baked good, made with egg whites (and yes the Pavlova is ours). While these are entertaining and probably useful when you attend your first New Zealand social gathering, they really only scratch at the surface as to what a new life in this country might entail.

Becoming a “Kiwi” is less about understanding the difference between what we might call footwear and others underwear, and more about understanding how your own social cues, norms and traditions might differ to how we do things here. It is about appreciating that a new life in New Zealand is something you work gradually towards, learning as you go, making mistakes along the way and finally coming to a comfortable understanding with.

What if I told you, that for one of my clients, his ability to secure Residence came down to whether he may or may not have worked an extra nine minutes per week. Well you might think that sounds a bit ridiculous, but for a client we have been working with for the last few months, that is literally what it boiled down to. What was more compelling that those nine minutes per week, were the difference between being able to live here permanently or having to leave forever, because, given his age, this application was his last chance to make it work.

Well truth is often stranger than fiction and the situation described above is absolutely real, and for one client that nine minute problem has been the cause of significant concern, anxiety and stress.

But why was nine minutes such an issue? Well in this weeks article we take another trip down the INZ rabbit hole, to find out what caused this very bizarre situation, what we did about it and of course (so we dont leave you hanging) the final outcome.

When you are the only game in town, the ability to charge whatever you like is pretty easy and that appears to be how the current Government sees our immigration system, who are in fact, the only game in town. Having a monopoly over the visa process, means they control the pricing and in today’s media announcement from the beehive, INZ has been tasked with increasing almost all visa application fees, effective from 01 October 2024.

None of this is unexpected, given the Minister has been signaling fee increases for some time and in news only a few weeks ago, those discussions were being held at cabinet level. At that time, there were some pretty big numbers being thrown about and what we have been given today, appears to be a slightly watered down version of the initial proposal.

ANZSCO (a better explanation follows) is the statistic reference Immigration New Zealand uses to determine whether your job is skilled and what level that skill sits at. It is a cross-border list of occupations, used by Australia and New Zealand for a variety of things, but features heavily in how visas are processed for those coming in under our skilled categories.

Statistics New Zealand’s introduction to this change made the following comment “The current Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) is outdated, and no longer meets the needs of either country”. Apart from being a fairly damning critique of the system, it is absolutely spot on. ANZSCO was never really designed to be used in the visa process, but was a conveniently available tool to adopt.

I comment a lot on the relevance of “rules” in terms of the New Zealand immigration process and mostly because they are the back-bone as to how the whole system works. Migrants are basic pushed through a mandolin of criteria, rules and policy, and the slices that fall out, should resemble a visa of some description.

However, it is easy to overlook that for most people, their knowledge of how these rules actually work will be limited to tick boxes in an online form or if you go old-school, questions on a paper-based application. Some migrants are brave enough to try and read Immigration New Zealand’s website to see if they can decipher how the process works, but very few applicants find themselves in amongst the weeds of the formal operations manual (most wouldn’t know what that is).

The humble interim visa, which although usually granted to people without having to apply, is often one of the most complicated visas to understand. Interim Visa are essentially a bridge between your old visa expiring and your new visa being approved. Whilst traditionally used for temporary visa applications, they are now also offered to those applying under certain resident visa categories.

Whilst most people assume that interim visas are automatically issued by INZ, there is actually a bit more to it. The timeframes granted and conditions attached to these visas can also be very hard to understand - so this week we dive in to this and have a look at when and how interim visas are issued, how long they last for and what you can do with them.

Yes indeed, it is time to tackle the migrant job search puzzle again, except this time, I have managed to bring in the big guns - in the form of some sage advice from Dawn Headey, an employment specialist who works closely with migrants specifically to tackle this almighty mountain. I roped Dawn in to contributing to this post, because like me, she has a pretty clear understanding of the challenge migrants face, but she also speaks the same language in terms of how to address that challenge.

There is no shortage of people out there, offering “CV preparation” packages to would-be migrants, but in my experience Dawn is one of the only people who actually understands how this process works, and wont just deliver you a template. On that basis, I asked Dawn to add her tips and tricks for migrant job seekers, which I will share below.

New Zealand has developed this fascination with employment being the key component in assessing a migrant’s potential value and therefore eligibility to reside here permanently. There is logic to this of course, but could we be thinking bigger in terms of the value that migrants bring and how we actually measure that?

The problem with using just one main qualifying criteria (in this case, having a job here) is that it means we miss out on so many other great quality candidates who are likely to bring so much more value to the country over time. Personally I think New Zealand needs to think bigger in terms of how we attract the best and the brightest to this little slice of paradise.

It seems that ambush policy is the modus operandi for this new Government and on Wednesday, 26 June, the Government rolled out further changes to Work Visa policy - targeted specifically at partners to people here working in lower skilled roles on an Accredited Employer Work Visa.

These changes essentially mean that partners and children of those people here, working in roles at skill level four or five, will not be able to secure visas based on their relationship and will have to qualify independently. A strong signal that the focus for this Government is on reducing lower skilled migration and increasing the numbers of higher skilled able to come in.