Helping families reunite and supporting economic recovery with border exceptions

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Last week the Government took the next steps to safely help reunite New Zealand families, and support economic recovery without increasing the risk of COVID-19, as noted by the Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway on Friday.

Key changes include:

  • Removing the need for partners and dependants of NZ citizens and residents to travel together to return home when they have a relationship-based visa or are ordinarily resident in New Zealand

  • Allowing entry of maritime vessels where there is a compelling need

  • Allowing entry for diplomats taking up new posts

  • Introducing short term and long term criteria for Other Essential Workers requests

“The bar for being granted an exception to the border restrictions is set high, and remains high, to help stop the spread of COVID-19 and protect the health of people already in New Zealand. Everyone coming in will still need to do 14 days of managed isolation or quarantine so we are working within our current capacity of 3200 for the facilities run by the Ministry of Health,” added Iain Lees-Galloway.

The numbers as at 10 June:

  • 15,331 requests for a border exception (this is across all exception categories, and includes duplicate applications)

  • 2,914 of those have been invited to apply for a visa

  • 2,456 visa applications have been approved

A subset of this is Other Essential Workers:

  • 2,372 people have made requests

  • 237 individuals have been invited to apply (around 10 percent of all approvals)

- TIN Bureau

ImmigrationThe Indian News