Immigration application fees to increase on 1 October 2024
On 9 August 2024, the Government announced that immigration application fees will increase effective 1 October 2024. Fees are approximately doubling for most of the applications. This followed speculation since before the election in 2023 that the incoming National led government might increase fees to 90% of the equivalent Australian fees. In the partnership area this was going to lead to an increase to over $8000. The result has been more nuanced, but there are still winners and losers.
Major fee increases:
- Partnership-based Resident visa from $2750 to $5360
- Partnership-based Work visa from $860 to $1630
- Skilled Residence visa (this includes Skilled Migrant Category, Green List: Straight to Residence, Green List Work to Residence, and Care Workforce: Work to Residence categories) from $4290 to $6450
- Active Investor Plus Resident Visa is increasing from $7900 to $27,470
- Parent Retirement Resident visa from $5260 to $12,850
- Entrepreneur Resident visa from $6860 to $14,890
- Dependent Child Resident visa from $2750 to $3230
- Accredited Employer Work visa from $750 to $1540
- Student visa from $375 to $750
- Post-Study Work visa from $700 to $1670
The full list of visa types and the corresponding fee increase can be found here: https://www.immigration.govt.nz/documents/media/immigration-fee-and-levy-table-rates-from-1-october-2024.pdf
Winners?
Pacific offshore applicants
The government announced that it will continue subsidising the fees for applicants from Pacific countries and there will be no fee increases for Recognised Seasonal Employer Visa, Pacific Access Category and Samoan Quota Resident visas.
We sought further details of this from the deputy chief executive’s office and were told that: Pacific Fee Band Rates (which apply to citizens of Pacific countries who are applying from offshore) will increase by only 25 percent of the amount necessary to fully recovery estimated costs.
Samoan applicants are exempt from the surcharge when applying for residence but not temporary visas onshore. All other onshore applications by Pacific applicants will face the full increase. The majority of Pacific applicants that we represent, are onshore applicants. Most of them will pay the full increase.
Employer costs
Some fee types are virtually unchanged, with only minor increases to accredited employer accreditation and job checks for which the employer pays. The actual work and dependent visas, for which the employee is responsible, are more than doubling in cost.
Losers?
There has been media discussion that these increases go far beyond cost recovery in some cases.
Investors
The increases in the investor area are very significant. Parent retirement category is a low priority for staffing with very long delays. Yet applicants will now be paying more than double the current application fee for the privilege of waiting 12 to 14 months before their case is even allocated for processing.
Active Investor Plus fees have been tripled. That clearly doesn’t represent processing costs. Early reports were their take-up of this new category, which requires pre-checking by NZTE, has been modest. It is hard to understand how a nearly $20,000 increase in fees will encourage more investors.
Partner visas:
The above increase still represents a significant increase for most partnership applicants. Typically these applicants go through various stages including temporary work visas and in some cases dependent visas for their children. For a partner and two children the total increase for work and student visas, for example would be around $1500. With residence processing delays a second temporary visa is often needed.
The increase for partnership resident applications is $2610. Depending on the size of the family the net increase could be somewhere between $3000 and $7,000.
Comparing apples with (Aussie) apples
Early on in the discussion about the fee increases there was reference made to Australian visas. Australian partner visas are more expensive (currently A$9950) but the visas are structured differently, with a temporary visa issued which stays in force until the permanent visa is granted approximately two years later. Here the maximum time that a partner work visa can be granted for is two years.
The chief executive’s office told us that Immigration New Zealand had listened to feedback:
MBIE consulted widely with a range of stakeholders including the Ministry for Pacific Peoples and Ministry for Ethnic Communities. The feedback led to two reductions in the partnership resident visa levy rate, once in April prior to targeted consultation and once as part of the final decisions in July following the targeted consultation.
Lodge now if you can
Where possible, we are encouraging our clients to lodge visa applications before 1 October 2024 to avoid the fee increases.
Expect delays
The fee increase is highly likely to lead to a rush to get applications in before 1 October, thereby causing processing delays. Recent discussions at the Hamilton Office of Immigration New Zealand suggest there is at least a major reduction in hiring if not a hiring freeze. That means that additional staff are not being brought on to deal with additional demand.
Seek Advice : Contact us
Let our wealth of experience with all of these categories and our extensive contacts with immigration New Zealand at all levels be used to your advantage. Contact our friendly team either through our website https://pacificlegal.co.nz/, by email Of****@*************co.nz or directly through our director Richard Small Ri***********@*************co.nz
This information was up-to-date at the time of writing but immigration and processes can change at short notice and can vary from case to case. For up-to-date information for your case, contact our office.
