Newsflash

In attempt to help ease casual workforce shortages, the New Zealand Government recently announced[1] several changes to the Working Holiday Visa which will benefit the tourism industry over summer and beyond. Immigration Minister Michael Wood revealed a ‘revitalised and streamlined immigration system’ that would help relieve workforce shortages by temporarily increasing access to working holiday […]

On 20 July 2022, the Ministers of Immigration and Economic and Regional Development announced the biggest overhaul in New Zealand’s investment instructions for over a decade. The new category is called the Active Investor Plus Category (AI+).  The focus is on direct investment into New Zealand firms to assist them to become more internationally competitive.

Recent media reports suggest that as of 15 May, 97,179 applications including 194,632 people had been received and 21,364 applications had been approved – with residence visas for 48,327 people issued. The government has pledged that 80 percent of applications will be decided within 12 months. National immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford said Immigration New Zealand\’s

Border Re-Opening Finalized… And More Finally, we have certainty!  In our 25 March 2022 blog we explained that the Government had announced steps to reopen the border.  We now have a final time table for all of those steps…and others aspects of the “Immigration Rebalance.” We also have more information on the new pathway to

New Zealand Borders Reopening – Update! Our last blog on this topic in February 2022 outlined the Government’s initial plan to reopen the New Zealand borders in 5-steps.  That has already started to happen with the opening of the Working Holiday Schemes as of 13th March 2022. Since then, the Government made a further ‘surprise’

2021 Residence Visa Update: March 2022 Changes have been made since our last  blog about this visa in November 2021 and processing of our biggest ever one-off visas category is well under way. It would also be the most “tweaked” category we can remember in a long time! On 30 November 2021 it was announced

After months of delays we seem to have finally rounded the corner on a firm timetable for the reopening of the border. There have been a number of travel bubbles with Australia and the Pacific previously but reopening plans have been set back by the Delta and most recently Omicron Covid variants. On 3 February

The initial introduction of the 2021 Residence Visa in December 2021 was a technical disaster.  Immigration New Zealand  who has had past problems with IT upgrades promised that it could handle large numbers of applicants.  In fact INZ’s website  crashed within hours of  applications for the new visa opening up on Wednesday 1 December leading to confusion

On 24th November 2021, the Government announced that New Zealand will reopen the border to the wider world from Sunday 1st May 2022.  This has been a long-awaited announcement which comes as welcomed news to many currently stranded overseas but comes too late for those wanting to be home for Christmas, or still need to go through the highly-criticized

2021 Resident Visa: more details are revealed Our recent blog introduced the new one-off 2021 Resident Visa – a pathway to residence for people already living and working in New Zealand. The full instructions have now been released about this category. Pacific Legal is able to provide more details and to help guide you through the process.