Behind the differing treatment of countries under the staggered border reopening is a history of the New Zealand government deciding which guests it would like to have and those it would rather stay home
Auckland International Airport was the scene of countless emotional reunions on Monday as New Zealand borders opened to travellers from visa waiver countries.
Travellers arriving from Los Angeles on Monday morning entered a concourse full of exuberant crowds and live waiata.
It’s the first time travellers from visa waiver countries further afield than Australia have been able to freely enter New Zealand for over two years, and accordingly the moment where many separated families have been able to finally come back together.
People from countries on the visa waiver list, which has a large overlap with the OECD, can now come holiday in New Zealand provided they can show proof of vaccination and a pre-departure test.
Countries with and without visa waiver travel to New Zealand
But while New Zealand is essentially open for business for the 60 countries on the right list, the rest of the world still have months to wait before they can come - including common points of origin for overseas-born New Zealanders such as China, India, South Africa and the Phillipines.
Monday’s border changes represent the latest step in the staggered border opening, which will next see people on accredited employer work visas through in July, followed by the end of all border exceptions in October.
However, with a visa processing capacity that was in the process of being reduced even before the advent of the pandemic, it’s not merely a question of booking a flight for people from these countries once the light turns green.
Processing could potentially delay visas for weeks to months, meaning New Zealand borders may remain closed to much of the world until the end of the year.
ACT leader David Seymour questions the benefit of leaving the border closed to non-visa waiver countries.
“The Government needs to explain the costs and benefits of the staggered border opening that stretches through to October, because it looks like they’re making it up as they go,” he said. “How many cases will opening the border to non-visa waiver countries lead to, what is the rationale for doing it now instead of six months ago, what is the benefit of leaving the border closed to non-visa waiver countries?”
He said border restrictions are playing a part in rising inflation and costs of living.
“Halting production by closing the border means people can’t access the goods and businesses can’t get the staff,” he said. “Restrictions at the border contribute to inflation, because there’s too much money chasing after too few goods.”
On top of economic concerns, the staggered border reopening has been a difficult pill to swallow for split families from non-visa waiver countries.
Immigration adviser Katy Armstrong said every time border announcements were made that continued to neglect people from non-visa waiver countries, these families felt worse and worse.
“Every time they draw a line in the sand, if you're left on the wrong side of it you feel doubly depressed,” she said.
In 2022, the New Zealand Government is treating the countries on these two lists very differently. In an effort to find out the fundamental reasons for this differing treatment, Newsroom went to Immigration New Zealand for answers.
Kirsty Hutchison, manager of border and funding immigration policy at the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment said the ministry used a wide range of criteria to decide whether there is a compelling enough case to introduce visa waivers for any given country.
These factors include passport strength, possible security of reputational risks to New Zealand, and the likelihood of whether visitors will come for genuine personal, business or leisure reasons - as opposed to coming to work or live - "reasons that are outside what we expect from visitors”.
Having to apply for a visa means potential travellers are given scrutiny by immigration officers when it comes to their reasons for travel, character, state of health and likelihood of returning home.
“[The process] allows us to balance the objectives of facilitating travel to New Zealand with managing potential immigration risk,” Hutchison said. “As such, the case for extending visa waiver status needs to be compelling.”
Immigration New Zealand offers visa waivers to countries where these checks are considered an unnecessary safeguard and barrier to travel. So at its heart, the list a country ends up on seems to be a judgment of ‘immigration risk’.
The Immigration Act 2009 grants Immigration New Zealand the ability to “manage immigration in a way that balances the national interest, as determined by the Crown, and the rights of individuals,” a purpose it seeks to achieve by requiring visas from most people and making the call on who is granted a visa.
According to geographer Professor Richard Bedford’s 1998 research on visa waivers, New Zealand has a liberal visa waiver policy in comparison with countries like Australia and the United States, due to the willingness by successive governments to enter into bilateral visa waiver agreements.
Prior to World War I, movement into the country was largely free, but an act in 1920 proclaimed that while free entry was sustained for people of British or Irish birth, other nationalities were only allowed in under the discretion of the minister.
From 1961, everyone apart from New Zealanders and Australians needed a permit to enter the country.
It was during the 1980s that visa exemptions were brought back for countries such as the UK, Ireland, Canada and much of Western Europe. In the 1990s, the list of visa waiver countries nearly doubled, from 30 countries at the beginning of the decade to 50 in 1999.
In 1998, Indonesia’s visa waiver status was revoked due to an increasing number of people using it to come here and claim asylum.
It’s in this last example that we can see some of Immigration New Zealand’s reasoning for who goes on which list - this is the aforementioned ‘immigration risk’ rearing its head.
Assessing this risk is no doubt a delicate balance, especially seeing as in pre-Covid times, New Zealand was a country with tourism as its largest service exports industry, with a labour market that often relied on injections of human resources from overseas. Not to mention the fact that more than a quarter of New Zealand’s population was born outside of the country.
Armstrong wonders what good outcomes can come from making entry more difficult for people from countries on the wrong list, especially as New Zealand finds itself in dire need of skilled workers to plug labour gaps in areas like healthcare, IT and aged care.
“If the outcome that New Zealand becomes a country that is unfriendly and unworkable for people from non-visa waivers, then don't we have a bit of a problem on our hands?” she said. “Where do we get most of our health workers? They're not coming from England or from Ireland.”
Many of the workers New Zealand needs are being brought in from places like the Phillipines and India - a potentially difficult proposition when stringent visa rules make it difficult for these migrants to see family going forward.
