Please contact us for further information.

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On Sunday 7 April 2024 New Zealand’s Immigration Minister announced immediate changes to the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) scheme.

The Government has indicated changes are designed to ensure more stringent testing of the local labour market to reduce the risk of putting New Zealanders out of work and to reduce what the Government has called “unsustainable” levels of migration.

In 2023, annual net migration to New Zealand hit a near record high of more than 173,000 non-New Zealand citizens in the year to December.

Changes to the visa program include the introduction of English language requirements for low-skilled jobs and setting a minimum skills and work experience threshold for most employer work visas. The maximum continuous stay for most low-skilled roles has also been reduced from five years to three years.

Unless your occupation is on the Green List and meets the Green List role requirements, or is paid at least twice the median wage, you must now have:

·        at least 3 years’ relevant work experience.  To meet the work experience requirement, you must provide evidence proving you did the work — you cannot include documents that you wrote (this includes a CV).
or
·        a relevant qualification at level 4 or above of the New Zealand Qualifications and Credentials Framework (NZQCF). Evidence of your qualification must be accompanied by an International Qualification Assessment (IQA) if it is below Bachelor’s degree level.

Plans to add 11 roles to Tier 1 of the Green List were also cancelled.

Fortunately, the majority of healthcare roles, including doctors, specialists, sonographers, radiographers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, nuclear medicine technologists and podiatrists remain on Tier 1 of the Green List and are not impacted by the changes at this time.

The Green Lists are regularly reviewed with professions added and removed from the lists to meet the country’s labour shortages.

If your occupation is currently still on the Green List there is no better time to make the move to New Zealand.

Contact GHS today.

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• The WHV opened to include UK travellers aged 18-35;
• UK WHV holders can stay in New Zealand for up to three years;
• UK WHV holders can work the full duration of their visa; and
• an annual cap of 15,000 UK Working Holiday Visas will apply.

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To support the new system Health New Zealand now offers migration assistance to potential recruits.  It is important to understand that Health New Zealand does not manage the visa application on your behalf.  What does this mean?  In practice, this involves Immigration New Zealand providing you with an email listing a series of links on how to apply.  A simple Google search of Immigration New Zealand would provide you with the same information.  The RealMe account which applicants are required to create to lodge a visa application is not user friendly.  Many people fail at this very first hurdle.  Health New Zealand will not prepare the visa application for you.  They will not assist you to obtain the necessary documents and they will not assist with the uploading of documents.  They will not edit your photo to ensure it meets the parameters (a strangely difficult task even for those with great photoshop skills).  They won’t provide you with a series of questions for your doctor or specialist (if you have a health issue) to ensure you have provided enough information to meet the health requirements for a visa.   They will not check over your partnership documents to ensure you have provided enough evidence and they will not appeal a visa refusal. To date, we have spent a considerable amount of time assisting recruits who are supposedly utilizing Health New Zealand’s assistance.

In theory the Immigration assistance provided by Health New Zealand is a fantastic service.  The reality is quite different. At GHS we ensure that you are visa ready before you even sign a job offer and we will support you through every practical step of the process.  At GHS our migration assistance is comprehensive and tailored to your specific circumstances.  We manage your visa application from start to finish.

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1. Sonographers
2. Radiographers
3. Medical Resonance Imaging Technologists
4. Nuclear Medicine Technologists
5. Medical Radiation Therapists
6. Physiotherapists
7. Occupational Therapists
8. Podiatrists
9. Clinical Physiologists (sleep, renal, exercise, respiratory, neurology, and cardiac)
10. Speech Language Therapists
11. Registered Nurses
12. Enrolled Nurses

Immigration estimate, 90% of straight to residence applications will be processed within 87 days.

If you are on shore in NZ in one of these occupations and you have not yet secured residence, please contact GHS for assistance.

If you have not yet made the move to NZ and are looking at securing work in one of these occupations, we would encourage you to apply to GHS TODAY.

We have licensed migration advisers and experienced recruitment professionals ready to make your dream a reality.

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The Skilled Migrant Category Residence pathway has traditionally been New Zealand’s main residence visa category based on skills and employment.   The key proposal is to introduce a new, simplified points system.  The new system will create a clear skill threshold for residence but will still offer several ways for people to demonstrate their skill level.

Applicants must have at least 6 points to be eligible, this can be made up of:

3 to 6 points based on either professional registration, qualifications or income.  People can choose the skill category that offers the most points based on their circumstances; and

1 point per year of working in New Zealand in a skilled job, up to a maximum of 3 points.

All applicants must have a job, or a job offer in New Zealand and be paid at least the median wage.

No specific date for these changes has yet been announced.  If you believe that the impending changes may affect your eligibility to apply for residence, we encourage you to apply now if you presently meet the residence threshold.

Contact GHS for further information.

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But what if your passport expires in, say, 11 months?  Passports are expensive and, depending on your location, can take a while to be issued.   Whilst certain visas are issued for a specified period, visas will not be issued beyond the expiration date of your passport. 

This can be a problem if you have been offered a job for 24 months, but your passport expires in 12 months.  You will find yourself in a position where you will not only have to get a new passport, but also apply for a new visa in 12 months’ time.

At GHS we recommend that you replace any passport with 12 months or less validity at the start of the recruitment process for you and family members travelling with you.

We also ask that you always let us know before you renew a passport so that we do not make a visa application prior to receiving your new passport.  If an applicant applies for a visa with one passport and subsequently renews it, the visa must be transferred into the new passport before travel. 

This can take up to six weeks and can delay travel plans. So, check your passports sooner rather than later when considering a move, as an expiring passport can be a costly oversight.

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Partners of workers in Green List occupations will retain the right to an open work visa however if you have a job offer in an occupation not on the Green List, NOW is the time to make the move if you would like your partner to secure working rights immediately.

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