This week the world farewelled a music legend - Dolly Parton, who died on 25 August at the age of 80. Much has rightly been said about her extraordinary career, her philanthropy, her humour and her ability to remain unmistakably herself through decades in an industry that is not always especially forgiving of that sort of thing.

Trust is a fairly important ingredient in an immigration system. Applicants trust that the rules published by Immigration New Zealand mean what they appear to mean (assuming they can interpret them). Employers trust that if they follow the process, pay the fees and provide the evidence requested, somebody at the other end will deal with it properly. Migrants hand over passports, medical information, police certificates, employment histories, financial records and increasingly biometric information, on the assumption that the government agency receiving all of this is competent, secure and properly managed.

Most of the time, we simply assume that it is, however revelations concerning Immigration New Zealand’s failed Biometric Capability Upgrade (BCU) project make that assumption worth looking at a little more closely. The BCU project began eight years ago, in 2018 and was intended to modernise the technology INZ uses to manage and match biometric information. After seven years of development, delays and mounting concerns, it was discontinued in December 2025 without delivering the intended new system or anything even remotely close to one.

Most days, preparing and filing a visa application looks and feels reasonably modern. We can lodge work visas online. We can lodge student and visitor visas online. Skilled residence applications are online. Even Active Investor Plus applications, involving significant investments and often substantial financial evidence, can be prepared, uploaded and submitted entirely electronically.

The documents are gathered digitally, reviewed digitally and filed through an online portal. The fee is paid online and the application arrives at Immigration New Zealand immediately. No anxious wait for a courier or relentless track and trace.

Then a Parent Resident or Parent Retirement Resident Visa application lands on our desk and we head back to the 1980’s. The online portal is replaced by a paper form, signatures need to be collected and originals or certified copies have to be bundled up before the application can be submitted.

I was almost going to change the title of this article, because I had published one previously (back in 2025) with the same name. However it felt right to keep it, and the content is vastly different. The last one was about decision timeframes, but this one is a little more of a walk down memory lane with the Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) as the backdrop.

Considering we have another round of changes to the SMC coming up in just under a month’s time, it felt about right to take stock and think about how far this category has come, where it stands now (or will stand in a few weeks) and where we might be headed. The SMC is the backbone of our immigration system, generating the long-term skills and contributions our future needs, and it has had an interesting history (even if you don’t follow immigration trends).

For many migrants, securing New Zealand residence is not quite the end of the journey and often it is part of a much bigger plan to reunite the whole family in New Zealand. Parents are often part of plan for the overall move, and obviously the options that exist for them are a key part of the decision making process. I regularly consult with hopeful skilled migrant, where the end of the discussion naturally turns to what options might exist for mum and dad - which makes a lot of sense, particularly if the family has operated as close-knit unit in the run up to the big move.

Parents (grandparents) can provide childcare, emotional support, cultural connection and the sort of unsolicited practical advice that apparently remains compulsory regardless of how old their children become. For many families, having parents nearby is an important part of genuinely being able to settle in New Zealand.

We are a little less enthusiastic when those same people need somewhere to live, drive on the motorway, enrol their children at school or appear in the latest migration statistics. We tend to like what migrants do. We are sometimes less certain about the migrants themselves. We see this regularly in online commentary, particularly around election time.

New Zealanders have a slightly complicated relationship with immigration. We want all the benefits that migrants bring - skills, investment, family connection and yet we aren’t that keen on the actual concept of migration itself. We want the doctor to help speed up appointment times, the nurse looking after us in hospital, the builder constructing the houses we are short of, and the engineer repairing the infrastructure we failed to maintain.

We are a little less enthusiastic when those same people need somewhere to live, drive on the motorway, enrol their children at school or appear in the latest migration statistics. We tend to like what migrants do. We are sometimes less certain about the migrants themselves. We see this regularly in online commentary, particularly around election time.

When I started in this industry (well over two decades ago), things worked very differently - all applications were paper-based, meaning you had to physically courier your documentation, forms and fee to INZ for them to the create a file and eventually process the application.

INZ would send decision letters to applicants in the post and letters of concern would also be sent by hard copy. Whilst it was slow and somewhat tedious, it was how things were done and despite the sluggish pace of things, visas were issued and in fact we had a lot more engagement with officers, over the phone.

There has been a bit of news recently (on the migrant social media network at least) in relation to Australia lifting it’s visa application fees…and to be fair, we had the same conversations here in NZ when we did the same in 2024. Comparatively New Zealand is pretty good value compared to Australia - a partnership resident visa application here will set you back NZD$5,360.00, whereas in Australia, that will lighten your wallet for AUD$11,710 (nearly three times the NZ equivalent). Skilled applications are not much better - a family of four are paying AUD$12,275 and here in NZ, you would be paying NZD$6,450 for the same number of people.

The simple fact is that immigration has become more expensive, partly because there is a greater level of technology being used in the process (and that has to be paid for) but also because there has been an increase in verification needed to ensure applicants are above board. Most countries also see the immigration process as less of a public service and more of a cost centre, where applicants are expected to pay for the service (service is a relatively loosely used term of course).

Last week we looked at the newly released Skilled Migrant Category rules in some detail. Possibly more detail than some readers expected, wanted, or felt mentally prepared for - but necessary detail nonetheless, given the significance of those changes.

That is the problem with immigration policy. it rarely rewards a quick skim. It tends to sit quietly in the background, until someone realises that one word, one date, one wage rate, or one job title could change the outcome of a residence application.