New Zealand's border will fully reopen from July 31 - two months earlier than the Government initially planned.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed the new date, which has been brought forward from October, while speaking to a Business NZ lunch in Auckland today.
The final part of the staged border reopening will open the country to all visa categories - including tourists, workers, families and students.
Ardern also announced a raft of immigration changes including pathways to residency for highly skilled workers in global demand.
The new settings also include long-signalled changes to the international education sector, also fully reopening by July 31 but with measures to stop it being used as a "backdoor route to residency".
Ardern said the changes would help address immediate skill shortages and speed up the economic recovery from Covid-19.
The July timeframe also brings it in line with travellers under the Accredited Employer Work Visa, while allowing time for Immigration NZ to prepare to process the visas, with resources already stretched and potentially impacting the processing of one-off residency applications.
"New Zealand is in demand and now fully open for business," Ardern said.
"This will be welcome news for families, businesses and our migrant communities. It also provides certainty and good preparation time for airlines and cruise ship companies planning a return to New Zealand in the peak spring and summer seasons."
It will also provide relief to industries crying out for workers, the tertiary education sector, and split migrant families from countries needing visas, who will have been separated for nearly two and a half years.
Ardern said pre-departure testing would be removed from the July 31 reopening.
Changes to immigration settings included a simplified immigration process, and visa extensions for around 20,000 migrants already in New Zealand to ensure skilled workers remained in the country.
It also included a "Green List" of more than 85 hard-to-fill roles to attract and retain skilled workers to fill skill shortages.
This involved a streamlined and prioritised pathway to residency incentivising skilled healthcare, engineers, trade and tech sector workers to relocate to New Zealand long term (see bottom of article for full list).
The Green List involved 56 jobs that could go straight to residency, and 29 jobs where people could apply for residency after two years.
Giving certainty to those bringing skills here had been a missing piece in the immigration system, Ardern said.
"We know a major constraint on business is access to skilled labour. This plan will increase the available pool of labour, while also speeding up our tourism recovery," Ardern said.
The Government has also announced rebalanced immigration settings that will help businesses access the key skills they need while ensuring wages and working conditions are improved for everyone.
Migrants employed in occupations under the Green List could come to New Zealand on a work visa from July 4 and apply for residence from September.
From September, residence could also be applied for directly from offshore. Minimum salary requirements applied in some areas, and would be indexed to the median wage and change over time.
Today's announcement comes as experts warn of a brain drain with Kiwis heading overseas, depleting the country of vital workers in short-staffed industries with the immigration settings here less attractive than in countries like Australia and Canada.
Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi said New Zealand could not return to pre-pandemic trends that relied on lower-skilled workers and resulted in the increased exploitation of migrants.
Over the past two years, more than 190,000 New Zealanders had done trades training, including apprenticeships, he said.
An extension to the Apprenticeship Boost scheme at a lower rate, announced on Monday, would support a further 38,000 New Zealanders into a trade.
Faafoi said the rebalanced immigration system would be simpler, moving more online and with fewer categories.
"Through the Accredited Employer Work Visa, employers won't need to provide as much information, can use their own recruitment processes to prove no New Zealanders are available for work, and Immigration New Zealand will endeavour to have these visas processed within 30 days once an employer is accredited.
"The Government recognises that shift for some sectors is more challenging than others by establishing new sector agreements to assist with the transition. They will provide access for specified sectors to lower-paid migrant workers, and all those employers can continue to hire working holidaymakers at any wage."
Faafoi said that for some sectors it would take time to transition away from a "reliance on cheap migrant labour".
The tourism and hospitality industries in particular have been hit hard by the pandemic, he said.
"The Government has agreed to temporarily exempt tourism and hospitality businesses from paying the median wage to recruit migrants on an Accredited Employer Work Visa into most roles.
"Instead, a lower wage threshold of $25 per hour will be required until April 2023. This follows the recent $27 per hour border exception that was granted around certain snow season roles to help the sector prepare for winter tourists."
New sector agreements for the care, construction and infrastructure, meat processing, seafood and seasonal snow and adventure tourism sectors will provide for a short-term or ongoing need for access to lower-paid migrants.
Around 20,000 visa holders with visas expiring before next year were being granted either a six-month extension or a new two-year visa with open work conditions, so they and their employers won't be affected by these changes, he said.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins said the full reopening is a significant milestone for the international education sector, which can now start to rebuild sustainably, with a big focus on value and by attracting genuine students.
More than 5000 international students have already been confirmed for entry as part of previous border exemptions, which means they can be here by mid-July.
From the end of July, all international students who meet normal entry criteria can enrol for study here. Hipkins said changes today would seek to attract students to New Zealand to learn, while also shutting the backdoor route to residency.
These changes include:
• Students in non-degree level courses will not get post-study work rights except where they are studying and then working in specified shortage and skilled occupations
• For degree-level and other eligible international students the length of time they can work after their studies will mirror the time they study in New Zealand. Currently some students can work for up to three years after just 30 weeks' study. Masters and PhD students will retain the right to work in New Zealand for up to three years after their studies
• Students will also not be able to apply for a second post-study visa in New Zealand.
Tourism Minister Stuart Nash said the decision to bring the final border opening date forward allows the country to fully reconnect to the world in time for traditional peak visitor season.
"We will be fully open to the world in mid-winter, traditionally our quietest period for visitors. Bringing forward the date allows prospective travellers to apply for visitor visas well ahead of time before taking the next step to book a flight or a cruise for future travel.
"Approximately 90 per cent of cruise visits are during the warmer months of October to April, and summer is our bumper tourism season overall. Today's announcement means it's full steam ahead for the industry who can plan with certainty for the rest of the year and beyond."
Today's announcement comes after several Government speeches throughout the pandemic about immigration settings, with a "reset" announced a year ago to target wealthy investors and "highly skilled workers" and to build up the local workforce.
University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker said bringing forward the full border reopening would have minimal impact on case numbers and preventing new variants, given people were already travelling here from around the world.
This was despite case numbers starting to track up again, with a 50 per cent increase in Auckland over the past three weeks from a seven-day moving average of 1569 cases on April 19 to 2390.
He said the focus needed to be on quickly identifying new variants at the border, and a conversation had about what conditions could be needed to close the border again, for example, if a highly deadly variant emerged.
Ardern today said Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine were destabilising the global economy.
She said recent chats with Prime Ministers from the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden had highlighted some of these concerns.
"There are heavy clouds in the world at the moment," she added.
But Ardern said her overseas counterparts also gave her hope.
She said there was cause for Kiwis to be optimistic, thanks to low unemployment and debt levels half of Australia's.
The PM said promising developments were under way with training and apprenticeship boosts.
She then catalogued a list of what she said were the Government's achievements, before announcing the border reopening date.
Both residence pathways will be limited to migrants 55 years or younger, which is aligned with the Skilled Migrant Category requirements.
Other employers will still be able to access skilled migrants, and many of them will also have a pathway to residence through the Skilled Migrant Category.
Migrants paid at least twice the median wage in other roles can also apply for residence after two years.
Fast-tracked residency
Eligible migrants employed in these occupations can come to New Zealand on a work visa from July 4 and apply for residence from September 2022. From September, residence can also be applied for directly from offshore. Minimum salary requirements apply where specified, and these will be indexed to the median wage and change over time.
Construction Project Manager
Project Builder
Quantity Surveyor
Surveyor
Chemical Engineer
Civil Engineering Technician
Civil Engineer
Electrical Engineer
Electronics Engineer
Electrical Engineering Technician
Electronic Engineering Technician
Environmental Engineer
Geotechnical Engineer
Industrial Engineer
Materials Engineer
Mechanical Engineer
Production or Plant Engineer
Structural Engineer
Engineering Professionals (Not Elsewhere Classified)
Telecommunications Engineers
Telecommunications Network Engineers
General Practitioner
Anaesthetist
Psychiatrist
Specialist Physicians (not elsewhere classified)
Surgeons (including general surgeons, cardiothoracic surgeon, neurosurgeon, orthopaedic surgeon, otorhinolaryngologist, urologist and vascular surgeon)
Other Medical Practitioners (including dermatologist, obstetrician, gynaecologist, ophthalmologist, diagnostic and interventional radiologist and radiation oncologist)
Resident Medical Officer
Medical Laboratory Scientist
Clinical Psychologists and Psychologists
Physicist (medical)
Orthoptist
Veterinarian
Other Spatial Scientist
Environmental Research Scientist
Food Technologist
ICT Managers ($120,000)
Software Engineer ($120,000)
ICT Security Specialist ($120,000)
Multimedia Specialists ($95,000)
Work to residency
Eligible migrants in these occupations can apply for residence after two years.
Anaesthetic Technician
Medical Laboratory Technician
Medical Imaging Technologist
Medical Radiation Therapist
Occupational Therapist
Sonographer
Podiatrist
Audiologist
All Registered Nurses (including but not limited to aged care)
Midwife
Teachers - secondary with specialisations and registered ECE
Automotive Electrician
Diesel Motor Mechanic (including heavy vehicle inspector)
Electrician (general) – registered
Plumber – registered
Dairy Farm Managers
Maurice Gee wrote more than 30 novels for adults and children.