Arunima Dhingra: NZ Association for Migration and Investment chair on the impact of international visa price hikes on migrant workers

Warnings that price hikes for international visas could chill the workforce.  

The Government is increasing costs across almost all categories from October to bring in an extra $536 million over four years.  

The cost for a skilled residence visa will rise by over $2000, and work visas are more than doubling in price. 

New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment chair Arunima Dhingra told Heather du Plessis-Allan this will put some people off.  

She says students will come no matter what because of the benefits, but migrants like tilers and carpenters with no residency pathways won't even bother. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heller du for see Alan nineteen ninet two is the text
umber You're welcome to weigh in on that, and we
will get into it around about five ten or thereabouts. Now,
new migrants are going to have to pay a lot
more to come here. From October one, prices for new
visas are set to skyrocket. The price of a skilled
residence visa is going to rise more than two thousand dollars.
It's about four thousand, three hundred at the moment, it's

(00:20):
going to be six thousand, five hundred. Work visas will
cost about double the current price, and applicants in the
investa plus category will have to pay about twenty seven
and a half thousand dollars for a visa, which is
more than triple what they pay at the moment. Arouney
Madingra is the chair of the New Zealand Association for
Migration and Investment and with us Now, hey, Kyoto, is

(00:43):
this going to put off any migrants from coming here?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
It possibly will. I mean what I say is that
we kind of use this, as you know, across all
the categories. We will see different effects across different categories
of visas. For example, if New Zealand keeps offering what
we offer for students studying master's courses here, I wouldn't
expect that we would see a drop in interest for
that piece. But for the other categories, say carpenters or

(01:08):
tilers that actually have no residence pathways, why would they
even bother coming to New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Okay, so for anybody who actually has the possibility of
becoming a resident and therefore becoming a citizen, this is
absolutely not going to put them off fair.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I mean at will. There's a lot of thinking that
needs to happen, and when employers that bring people into
the country, they will now have to budget for a
lot more. And one of the things that I quite
say blatantly is I understand that the government's trying to
align this with Australia, but the reality is we are
not Australia. Economy is not the same and people have
different motivations to come here.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Is it a bad thing, Arouma if we actually have
some migrants who are dissuaded from coming here, because frankly
we're running hot at the moment on.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
This, yeah, I think it is. We have to be
very careful. It has a potential of really being detrimental
to the New Zealand immigration system and in how it
supplements our workforce. When we are increasing these fees, we
have to give people something in return. With the current
situation with operationalizing with immigration New Zealand, inconsistent decision making,

(02:14):
the time it takes and then to increase the fees
from top is a disaster waiting to happen, are we actually?

Speaker 1 (02:20):
I mean, the argument the government's making at the moment
is that these fees will put us on power the
Aussies and the UK. Is that right?

Speaker 2 (02:27):
It will? But I think what I say to that
is that we are not the UK and we are
not Australia. We cannot compare apples to apples, and if
we are going to put ourselves in that position, then
I think there's a lot of other factors that need
to be taken into account.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
We are I mean, can I just say though, I mean,
you're making it sound like if we put the stuff in,
nobody's going to want to come here. The fact is
we are a very attractive destination. They will still.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Under come in. I mean, people obviously have motivations and
like I said, if you look at a student visa
doesn't matter how much you increase the feast, because they
get so much for doing a master's here, they're still
going to be queues outside of New Zealand. When you
look at other visa categories, like there's partners that have
people here, this is going to hit the pocket. And
then you have those employers that are bringing workers from overseas,

(03:13):
They're going to have to pay a lot more. So
if we are increasing the fees, we have to get
our immigration processing these visas consistently and in a timely manner.
We have to give a better customer service.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Okay, if you're charging more, you have to make sure
that the services improved, right.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
One hundred percent. You can't expect someone to wait four
months for a visa.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
No fair enough? What's the UK service?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Like, I mean, the thing is that UK service? I
mean they've got fast priority QUS and I don't really
operate in that space. But it's not apples to apples.
All I'm saying is the FEESA is going to increase
from the first of October. Let's now give people more
incentives with a brilliant customer service, even make it better then. Currently,
operationalization within immigration is a bit of a mess and

(03:54):
it has to be rectified.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, a fair point. Hey a Runama, thank you very much.
I really appreciate you perspective. That's a Runamadngra, chair of
the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
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Speaker 1 (04:07):
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