Immigration Minister Andrew Little. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
A rebalance of New Zealand's immigration settings will include extensions to Recovery Visas, more roles on the Green List and restrictions on dawn raid-style deportations.
The changes follow recommendations made in an independent review released in July.
Four of the five recommendations are being implemented immediately, Immigration Minister Andrew Little said.
The fifth, which urged the government to specify criteria for out-of-hours compliance visits similar to those used during the dawn raids, would need to be resolved in Parliament as it necessitated an amendment to the Immigration Act.
"The government is committed to continuing to right the wrongs of the past, and honouring the historic dawn raids apology to Pacific people with action," Little said.
But Immigration New Zealand would still be allowed to enforce deportations outside regular hours, as long as they had a warrant.
"Cabinet has agreed to a policy that the act be amended to require a judicial warrant to be sought for out-of-hours compliance activity," he said.
"We think there still needs to be recourse for out-of-hours enforcement. I know there are some who thought it should never happen, but there will be some people who will be very evasive and for whom the only way to enforce our immigration laws is to allow out-of-hours enforcement."
The cap for the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme will be increased from 19,000 workers to 19,500 workers for the upcoming season - a much smaller increase than last year's.
"The cap increase last year, from 15,000 to 19,000, [was] quite big," Little said.
"Because of the weather events earlier this year a lot of crops in some parts of the country have been wiped out, so my expectation is demand will be less. I settled at 500 as an appropriate increase."
Seventeen roles were added to the Green List, including aircraft engineers, naval architects, welders, panelbeaters and other engineering roles.
Little said the infrastructure sector was struggling to fill gaps in its workforce as more projects loomed on the horizon.
"They still have many gaps, the infrastructure build is ramping up and we need those skills in place."
Corrections officers were also added to the list.
More roles were also added to the Construction and Infrastructure Sector Agreement, which lets employers recruit migrants at a lower wage than under the Accredited Employer Work Visa.
These included driller's assistants, earthmoving labourers and road traffic controllers.
Little said Recovery Visa holders would be given an extra three months to transition to longer-term visas.
But he said the category was now closed to new applications.
"The Recovery Visa was an immediate response to the Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle. Our focus is now on building a longer-term workforce to support the ongoing recovery and be ready to respond to future extreme weather events."
