I have counselled a lot of people over the years in terms of their decision to move permanently to New Zealand and I can tell you that based on that experience, you can almost feel the weight of the decision as people weigh up the pros and cons.

Uprooting yourself from your home, job, schools, family, friends and life to then try and recreate or reinvent (whatever your aim is) that in another country is a herculean undertaking.

At some point in the last two years and in large part thanks to Covid, we seem to have adopted a colour-coding approach to almost everything - whether it be Covid traffic light settings to tell us all to go, slow down or lock ourselves indoors or the newly minted “Green List” of current temporary Work Visa policy - colours are in and plain language explanations are out.

It is however INZ’s “Green List” which is the star of this post and getting to the bottom of what this list actually is, how it works and how it links to our current immigration “rebalance” as the borders open up to offshore workers.

Next Monday (04 July) sees the opening of our borders to workers under the new Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) scheme - a policy many years in the making. We have written about this new system previously but in a nutshell, it seeks to take six previous Work Visa policies (including our most commonly used one - the Essential Skills Visa) and combine them in to a new, employer-led, three step process…

In April 2022, the Productivity Commission released it’s final report in to how our immigration system might be better structured in to the future. The report (if you haven’t read it) is an interesting insight in to how immigration in NZ has been managed historically and provides a broad outline of how we might seek to use it in the future.

July is fast approaching and the borders will soon be open, allowing many employers to secure desparately needed skills from offshore. Getting prepared for this and staying on track can be a challenge. We have some top tips for employers aiming to recruit from offshore…

Immigration New Zealand (INZ) regularly comes under fire from a number of sources (the media being the top of the list), largely due to very public failings in service delivery and outrageous processing times, but are they entirely to blame? There are often two sides to every story…

I have been in the immigration industry for 16 years (if my memory serves me correctly) and over that time have helped thousands of people make the move to New Zealand - most of them permanently.

I have travelled extensively across Asia, Africa and Europe to meet with would-be migrants, experiencing their worlds and helping them to carve out a new life in our little patch of paradise at the bottom of the earth (or middle-earth as some prefer to call it).

The new Accredited Work Visa scheme is underway with applications for Accreditation (by employers) opening on 23rd May and initial Visa applications starting on 04 July. Meanwhile the global hunt for talent heats up…have you done enough to stay in the game?

It has taken over two years but the borders are opening. Whilst most existing Visa holders or Visa-waiver travellers are able to enter New Zealand, there are also some key dates coming up in terms of offshore Visa processing, particularly for those coming to work or to visit.