Before we sign off for the year (we close today) and everyone in New Zealand heads to the beach, BBQ’s and spending time with family (fighting over the Christmas ham), we thought it would be good to wrap this year up with a bow and send it off in style. So a final post, with a few highlights from 2024, not only in the visa space but from around the country.

For some of you, 2025 might be the year, you decide to make the move and some of what we have outlined below will help you be better informed as you make that decision. For others, who are already here, having run the visa gauntlet over the last 12 months, you will be able to appreciate what an interesting year it has been in Aotearoa.

The week before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a …. well okay, a few things were stirring, including policy makers within the halls of Immigration New Zealand. On Tuesday of this week, the Government rolled out a second round of changes to the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) system. The changes feel a a bit like the ghosts of Christmas past, with echoes of previous policy floating around and hints that we might be dropping some of the more rigid and almost unnecessary parts of the Accreditation process for employers, harking back to the old Essential Skills system.

The changes also come hot on the heels of some our most interesting net migration numbers, and whether that was a coincidence or possibly a little of bit of clever timing, is something to consider. Either way, the Government is clearly trying to steady the ship and rolling back aspects of the AEWV to policy settings of the past, without fully dismantling the system (a system that has cost a significant amount to implement).

We take a look at what is changing, why and what further changes might come about in the year ahead.

A couple of weeks back, I authored an article on some of things that aren’t immediately obvious in the visa world, and that include a very brief commentary on INZ’s decision to decline a visa application from Candace Owens. If you don’t who she is, I would suggest a very brief google review. Candace is essentially a very controversial social and political commentator whose views are considered far-right and in the extreme (and some of them could be considered by some to be slightly off planet).

The decision to decline Miss Owens a visa to travel here and undertake a speaking engagement was based on the fact that our Australian counterparts had decided to do the same, in the interests of protecting the public. New Zealand seemed to simply follow along, and decided to decline the application using a very particular part of the Act, arguing that Miss Owens had been “excluded” from Australia.

However during the course of this week, the Associate Minister of Immigration, decided to turn the wheel, enacting a visa ‘U-turn’ for Miss Owens, deciding to overturn INZ’s previous decision and to grant her a visa. A bold move, given Australia’s position, but ultimately in my view the right one.

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence or AI is here to stay and in fact, it is slowly finding its way in to almost every aspect of our lives. Washing machines that can work out to wash you clothes, cars that (almost) drive themselves and applications that you can talk to in case you might get a little lonely. The rapid rise of AI and its integration into our daily lives is pretty impressive and also potentially a little bit scary.

Whilst these systems have caught on very quickly, it is also important to remember that they are just systems and despite our quick adoption of the words artificial intelligence, we actually haven’t achieved that yet. What we have achieved is enormously sophisticated programs that can rapidly compare, contrast and interpret vast sets of data, to give you what appears to be an intelligent answer.

It has been quite the busy week for INZ in the media, with two very interesting scenarios playing out across our major news outlets. The first being the review, by INZ, of the activities of internet sensation IShowSpeed (aka Darren Watkins Junior) who toured NZ, filming his antics for the sake of his faithful followers, but doing so whilst here on a Visitor Visa. It appears INZ might have a few questions as to whether he was actually “visiting” or indeed working here, without the legal right to do so.

The second item to make the news, only today, was the cancellation of a visa for Candace Owens, a notable conservative political commentator who ironically did apply for a Work Visa in order to attend a public engagement here in February but who was declined by INZ, largely because she was also declined to undertake the same engagement in Australia.

33 days left until Christmas (34 for some of you reading this) and as we head in to the holiday season, with the weather warming up, days getting longer and the thought of some time off on most people’s minds, there will be plenty of others, considering a summer in New Zealand - not a bad idea at all. If you were however planning to spend time here over the holidays, taking in the sights or visiting family and you need a visa, then securing that before the end of the year could be a bit tricky.

INZ has various peak periods during the year, usually centered on the holiday season (this one coming up) and the influx of students at various start dates, with February and Marching being the most significant. So securing a visa now, with timeframes where they are might be challenging. If you are looking to come over and do need to apply, then my advice would be to file in a hurry or you might end up having to delay that trip.

Yesterday the Office of the Auditor General (OAG for short) published its review in to the Skilled Migrant Category, which comes as a bit of a precursor to the Minister’s promises to review this system in the near future. The report highlights things that our industry has been saying for many years and something I have been particularly vocal on - there is a definite lack of clarity and simplicity in the process which leads to longer processing times (in some cases) and challenges in filing applications that are ‘decision’ ready and can be swiftly dispatched.

These issues sit on top of very complicated and difficult to navigate technology platforms - the irony being that those platforms have had huge funding poured in to them. The report makes it fairly clear that this group of applicants (skilled migrants) are a focus point for New Zealand, particularly given the international hunt for talent that continues…

Going toe to toe with the immigration process can sometimes feel like ten rounds in a heavyweight boxing match. You go in with a plan, a strategy and a burning desire to win but along the way you get knocked down, pull yourself back up only for it all to happen again. You hopefully finish the fight a little battered and a little bruised, but holding your title belt high above your head.

In this week’s article we look at what it actually takes to make this work and to do so, I am going to be leaning on a very recent client experience, one, which in my view, demonstrates just how important it is to plan, prepare and be ready for a few knocks along the way. My ‘mantra’ if I had one is that you can never underestimate the amount of preparation that goes in to a move like this but at the same time you have to build in a good degree of flexibility (so you can dodge whatever blows the process might be trying to land on you).

Going toe to toe with the immigration process can sometimes feel like ten rounds in a heavyweight boxing match. You go in with a plan, a strategy and a burning desire to win but along the way you get knocked down, pull yourself back up only for it all to happen again. You hopefully finish the fight a little battered and a little bruised, but holding your title belt high above your head.

In this week’s article we look at what it actually takes to make this work and to do so, I am going to be leaning on a very recent client experience, one, which in my view, demonstrates just how important it is to plan, prepare and be ready for a few knocks along the way. My ‘mantra’ if I had one is that you can never underestimate the amount of preparation that goes in to a move like this but at the same time you have to build in a good degree of flexibility (so you can dodge whatever blows the process might be trying to land on you).