KEY POINTS:
Skilled immigrants have won a three-month extension to a controversial policy which gave them only six months to find a job in their field.
Migrants granted work-to-residence visas from yesterday will be given nine months to find a job, plus three months to get to New Zealand if
they are applying from overseas and need to give notice to their present employers.
But immigration agents, who asked the Government to give the migrants a year to find a job, said nine months "does not go far enough".
And migrants who are already here on six-month visas and have been unable to get jobs in their fields said an extra three months would still not give employers the confidence they needed to offer them skilled jobs.
"Employers say we have been through this before and we lost our employees because Immigration denied them the right to stay," said a Filipino human resource manager who has come here with his wife and 1-year-old baby.
"This six-month work-to-residence visa has never been heard of by employers. What you are given is a six-month work visa. They don't give you any indication on the form that it's a work-to-residence visa."
The work-to-residence visa is granted to "borderline" applicants for permanent residence in the skilled migrant category.
Until December 2005 they were allowed two years to get a job in their field and were then granted permanent residence, but this was cut to six months after the 2005 election in which the Labour Party signed a support agreement with New Zealand First.
More than 1300 Filipinos signed a petition to Prime Minister Helen Clark, Immigration Minister David Cunliffe and Ethnic Affairs Minister Chris Carter in January seeking a reinstatement of the two-year period.
Mr Cunliffe said he had "listened and acted on the considerable feedback from the migrant community", but considered that nine months rather than two years "is a better balance between giving migrants a decent chance to prove themselves while also ensuring that they have what's needed by Kiwi employers".
In addition, migrants arriving from yesterday will be able to get permanent residence as soon as they get a job in their skilled field. Before, they had to hold the job for three months before they could apply for residence.
Labour Department workforce policy manager Lesley Haines said migrants who were already here on six-month visas could now apply for a three-month extension even if they did not yet have a job in their field, and could also apply for residence as soon as they got the right job.
They will have to submit a new application under the skilled migrant category, but will not have to pay the $800 application fee again.
She said migrants granted work-to-residence visas were given letters explaining what the visa meant.
"The person can show this letter to a potential employer as proof they are eligible for residence if they get a skilled job," she said.
But Bernard Walsh, who chairs the immigration agents' Association for Migration and Investment, said a 12-month visa "would provide new arrivals with a more realistic opportunity for exploring the market for their specific skills, and would also make prospective migrants more attractive to employers".