"The capacity really isn't there, and it means they opened up a visa category in full knowledge that it was going to suck the living daylights out of the resources," - Immigration advisor Katy Armstrong
Call it a reset, a rebalance or re-jig - the government has finally unveiled its new vision for immigration in a post-pandemic world.
Many industries are welcoming the news borders will open for non-visa waiver countries from August, but with it comes changes.
This shift in focus aims to leave behind the reliance on cheap migrant workers in favour of filling high-skill, high-income roles - but the plan has copped criticisms of unfairness and poor implementation before it's even begun.
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Photo: RNZ
As part of the reset, employers wanting to bring workers in on temporary visas must apply for accreditation, pass a good character test and pay at least the median hourly wage.
Some sectors will get a temporary exemption with a lowered wage threshold; and there will also be a 'Green list' of 85 in-demand roles with a fast-track to residency.
National's Immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford questions how the system will cope, and says the government has resorted to a panicked shifting of resources.
"When we left office it took 21 days to get a visitor visa," she says. "They've had far fewer visas to process over the last two years ... they still take five months and they've got all those people doing the resident 2021 visa.
"[The minister] took every available resource and put in on the resident 2021 visa, which as you know is 110,000 applications, then the Prime minister said 'hey, we're going to open the borders' and he went 'uh oh, we don't have enough staff to do that'."
Minister Kris Faafoi insists migrants will always play an important role in New Zealand, and is confident Immigration NZ is ready for the influx of migrants - but advisors say they've been burned before.
Read more:
- New Zealand border reopening fully from end of July
- Government's immigration decisions under fire
- Rest homes say nurses should be on fast-tracked residency list
- Hipkins wants to diversify countries international students come from
- Border reopening causes 'massive upsurge' in new passport applications
- Nurses' union 'flabbergasted' sector left off fast tracked residence list
- Two-tier visa system a 'kick in the guts' - migrant workers' rights group
Meanwhile, Green Party spokesperson Ricardo Menendez March says the policies will entrench a two-tier system that punishes lower-paid workers - including those considered essential during the pandemic.
He says the government's plan amounts to "white immigration policy".
New Zealand Nurses Organisation president Anne Daniels says it makes no sense to have nurses on the second-tier list which means they'll have to wait for two years before going down the residency path.
Immigration adviser Katy Armstrong agrees the new policies are unfair.
"The huge missing link here is what happens to people who are onshore who've been working all through the pandemic and sometimes much longer than that and for whatever reason didn't get into that Residence 2021.
"The other cohort that I feel I just cannot believe how unfair we have been to them it's those post-study work visas ... left New Zealand just before March 2020 who are mostly, as it happens, from India ... if you're offshore you get nothing. Zero. That is not right."
Other sectors are eagerly anticipating the return of migrants, tourists and cruise ships, however: business groups, tourism, hospitality, the meat industry.
Educators are also looking forward to the return of international students, which pre-pandemic New Zealand would host about 115,000 of annually, and were worth about $5b a year.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins will travel to the United States, Chile and Brazil from this month to help rebuild, promoting New Zealand as an education destination, but again there's a shift in focus.
New rules will limit international students' ability to work and remain in New Zealand, and Hipkins also wants to diversify away from China.
Fortress New Zealand may be lowering the drawbridge but that could take a while - and it seems some are more welcome than others.
In today's Focus on Politics podcast Political Reporter Anneke Smith explores the border reopening, immigration changes, and the response.
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