Kaya Selby
RNZ Pacific journalist
New Zealand First will
offer a two-year clemency period for Pacific Islanders who
overstay their visas, the Winston Peters-led party has
announced.
While announcing a suite of immigration
policies on Friday, the party said the extra time would not
be available to any other nationalities, in recognition of
its “unique and close bond” with the Pacific.
It said
the 24-month period would be “to facilitate any Pacific
overstayer to apply to remain in the country legally on a
valid visa”, and those who failed to do so would be deported
after the period lapsed, “permanently ineligible to apply
for any visa in the future, due to their heightened risk of
reoffending.”
Other policies included a referendum on
a 20,000 resident visa cap, stricter birthright citizenship
rules, and broader liability for deportation.
The party
is also demanding one of its MPs be made Minister of
Immigration in the next government.
Peters has
previously accepted a petition by migrant rights campaigner
Anae Arthur Anae that advocates a visa-waiver for Pacific
nationals for up to three months, which is an entitlement
given to over 130 countries elsewhere.
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Anae, praising
the new policy, said it’s all too common for Pacific
islanders, relying on immigration consultants, to have
incomplete documentation.
“Since 2008, [Immigration
NZ] has been dealing with third parties on behalf of Pacific
people,” he said.
“It goes like this: someone comes
along, says ‘I can help you’. They pay them a fee to do all
the documentation, and they sit back and wait, thinking
everything has been done.”
“Meanwhile, it’s only
partially done, no follow-up, and then these people are
regarded as overstayers and deported.”
He said the
extra time to allow for islanders to get their affairs in
order could help them avoid this kind of
situation.
“Why do they keep hammering us about
overstaying all the time as excuses to their incompetence in
providing a service for people fairly?”
Immigration
NZ officials have recently batted off scrutiny in Parliament
over how the agency determines overstay risk per
nationality, which tends to single out Pacific countries
despite a relatively small number of arrivals.
It
revealed that this risk, combined with factors such as
national security and biosecurity, has given INZ cause to
advise cabinet against visa waivers to Pacific nationals
direct from their home country.
In its most recent
estimate, INZ said around 20,980 people currently in the
country had overstayed their visa – 2599 of whom were
Tongan, 2577 Chinese, and 2213 American.
Between July
2023 and 2025, Tonga had the highest overstay risk: 472 of
their 24,425 temporary arrivals, or nearly two percent.
Samoa followed, at 1.7 percent.
The United States had
nearly double the amount of overstayers as Tonga did at 894.
However, INZ deemed them a lower risk because that figure
was just 0.13 percent of their arrivals.
The US, Great
Britain, India and China, whose nationals receive an NZeTA
on arrival in New Zealand for three months, all had higher
overstay levels than Samoa.
“We consider that there is
a strong rationale for maintaining current policy settings,”
Immigration policy manager Stacey O’Dowd told Parliament’s
Petitions Select Committee.
Anae, whose petition is
still being considered by the Select Committee, said it was
an injustice that weighs heavy on the Pasifika
community.
“We’ve got to make applications, can’t even
get here for a funeral,” he said.
“I had a case
recently of someone who submitted an application to come to
her brother’s funeral. She gave them the death certificate,
she got her visa to come to his funeral 1 month after the
funeral. Explain that one to me.
Visa waivers for
Fijians, Samoans and Tongans were abolished in February
1987, three months after they were introduced. Waivers for
Tuvaluans, Ni-Kiribati and Dei-Naoero were similarly
scrapped in 2003.
As of this year, any Pacific
national can get in on an NZeTA if they go through Australia
first, a country that also lacks a visa waiver for the
region.
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