ISSUE
Friday, August 22, 2025
Volume 16 . Issue 73
Despite many assurances given by the immigration minister Michael Woodhouse and the Prime Minister himself to the Indian community, the current government is continuing its purge on the immigration numbers.
Now, it is about raising the bar for sponsoring parent visa from current five-year requirement to a new ten-year requirement.
According to the new rules being introduced by the government, the adult immigrants will have to continue to support their parents financially for a decade if they are approved to settle in New Zealand.
This is after a complete freeze was introduced last month in the parent visa category.
Till now, every year 5500 parents of migrants settled in New Zealand were approved under the parent visa category.
Of these, 20% were Indian parents, a distant second behind the 50% Chinese parents.
Apparently, there has been some pressure on the government from immigrant parents seeking income support as they were struggling to support themselves despite sponsorship commitments from their children.
The government announced some significant changes last month in reducing the number of skilled migrant category visa by 5000, reducing from current 90,000 to 85,000 over a period of two years.
“The planning range for the New Zealand Residence Program has been lowered from 90,000 to 100,000 for the last two years to 85,000 to 95,000 for the period between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2018,” a media release by the Government has then said.
It is important to note that Indian Weekender has previously raised voice against the knee-jerk reaction of the current government, including abrupt purging of parent visa category.
We have then proposed that the Immigration Minister could have de-coupled parent visa category, from the state health and welfare funding, and imposed the condition on new migrants to compulsorily buy health insurance for their emigrating parents.
The intention was to impose a financial cost on those immigrants who were willing to bear a cost to fulfil their cultural need of taking care of their old parents, instead of leaving them helpless behind in their country of origin.
It is not yet clear that this new proposed change by the government intends to facilitate that objective.
Despite many assurances given by the immigration minister Michael Woodhouse and the Prime Minister himself to the Indian community, the current government is continuing its purge on the immigration numbers.
Now, it is about raising the bar for sponsoring parent visa from current five-year...
Despite many assurances given by the immigration minister Michael Woodhouse and the Prime Minister himself to the Indian community, the current government is continuing its purge on the immigration numbers.
Now, it is about raising the bar for sponsoring parent visa from current five-year requirement to a new ten-year requirement.
According to the new rules being introduced by the government, the adult immigrants will have to continue to support their parents financially for a decade if they are approved to settle in New Zealand.
This is after a complete freeze was introduced last month in the parent visa category.
Till now, every year 5500 parents of migrants settled in New Zealand were approved under the parent visa category.
Of these, 20% were Indian parents, a distant second behind the 50% Chinese parents.
Apparently, there has been some pressure on the government from immigrant parents seeking income support as they were struggling to support themselves despite sponsorship commitments from their children.
The government announced some significant changes last month in reducing the number of skilled migrant category visa by 5000, reducing from current 90,000 to 85,000 over a period of two years.
“The planning range for the New Zealand Residence Program has been lowered from 90,000 to 100,000 for the last two years to 85,000 to 95,000 for the period between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2018,” a media release by the Government has then said.
It is important to note that Indian Weekender has previously raised voice against the knee-jerk reaction of the current government, including abrupt purging of parent visa category.
We have then proposed that the Immigration Minister could have de-coupled parent visa category, from the state health and welfare funding, and imposed the condition on new migrants to compulsorily buy health insurance for their emigrating parents.
The intention was to impose a financial cost on those immigrants who were willing to bear a cost to fulfil their cultural need of taking care of their old parents, instead of leaving them helpless behind in their country of origin.
It is not yet clear that this new proposed change by the government intends to facilitate that objective.
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