Cabinet ministers were warned there was “significant uncertainty” about the number of migrants who could access the Government’s new five-year parent visa, with potential impacts for New Zealand’s health system and infrastructure.
Some estimates of the volume of migrants who may seek the visa show a range of between 5000 and 15,000 as part of a first-year surge. The annual volume in the years afterwards would then be expected to be between 2000 and 10,000.
However, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford told the Herald there’s no expectation the upper number of 15,000 will be struck annually and many of those who arrive in New Zealand under the new visa may have come here anyway on another visa.
“This was always going to be a delicate balance to make sure family reunification is possible while also ensuring New Zealand’s health system is protected and we are managing risks of de facto settlement. That’s why the policy was carefully thought through.”
The Parent Boost visa was announced in June and will allow New Zealand citizens and residents to sponsor their overseas parents to visit and stay here for up to five years, with the opportunity to renew it once. It’s a visitor visa, so it doesn’t provide residency.
The Government wants to make New Zealand more attractive to skilled migrants who wish for their parents to have access to a long-term visa to visit them. The visa could also “enable higher labour force participation for families with young children” as their parents could support them while here.
During the design process, conditions were attached to the visa, including requirements relating to income or financial means, applicants having health insurance and the amount of time they can stay in the country.
However, while these were intended to mitigate potential impacts on the health system and address concerns of “de facto settlement” in New Zealand by the parents, documents show officials and the Immigration Minister identified the visa still came with risks.
Stanford told her Cabinet committee colleagues in May there was “significant uncertainty” about the expected volume of migrants accessing the visa.
Officials expected there would be some “substitution effects” from other similar visas. Applicants for those visas could also apply for the Parent Boost visa. One such visa is the Parent Residence visa, which Stanford noted had 15,000 people in its applicant pool.
But as those existing visas don’t have the same requirements as the Parent Boost visa, officials looked overseas for insight. The documents show the proposed new visa was heavily inspired by a Canadian model.
“While Canada has a lower proportion of migrants in their overall population, if there were similar volumes to Canada in a New Zealand context that may be approximately 9500 parents a year at peak,” the document from Stanford says.
A table was provided to ministers showing a potential range for an “upfront surge” in the first year (5000-15,000) and for the ongoing annual volume (2000–10,000).
Stanford said on Wednesday that given the visa’s specific settings, insights from Canada and existing visas, “we don’t expect volumes to be as high as 15,000 annually”.
“Estimates have a mid-point estimate of around 6000 Parent Boost visas per year, noting there may be an initial surge of interest in the first year,” she said.
“The overall additional number of visitors to New Zealand will be lower because some of these applications will come from visitors who would have applied for other visas. We have committed to a review in 2027 to ensure the visa is working as intended.”
The Cabinet committee document notes that because of the unknown volume of migrants who may take up the visa, “there is uncertainty about the potential impact on the health system and broader infrastructure”.
Requirements attached to the visa include that applicants must meet strict health screening requirements before coming to New Zealand and have health insurance covering emergency care, repatriation, return of remains and cancer treatment for the duration of their stay.
These are intended to “limit costs to the public health system”, but the paper says costs are still “likely to be incurred by this group, especially as older people’s health can deteriorate more quickly and they will be covered by ACC in the event of an accident”.
“The Ministry of Health advises that there will be impacts on the capacity of the health system to deliver care for those already living in New Zealand and public health system costs,” the paper says.
“Groups entering under the proposed parent visa, even with additional health screening, are likely to have higher health needs than the average population due to age. They would also impose costs on ACC in the event of an accident.
“Their use of health services (private and public) will place some additional pressure on health system capacity and could impact access to timely, quality health care for those already living in New Zealand.”
Modelling about potential impacts on the health system was provided assuming 30,000 additional people came into New Zealand using the visa over five years, though several caveats were highlighted and it could be “an over-estimate of system use”.
One estimate was that if each person had two general practitioner appointments each year, “this would be the equivalent of 0.4% of annual total appointment capacity from funded providers”.
Through the design process, other options to address health system impacts were considered. A health levy “would be difficult to set at the right level” and couldn’t be implemented quickly, while requiring comprehensive health insurance would be more costly than the emergency cover chosen.
Stanford told the Herald the health requirements chosen were “similar to what other countries have done”, such as Canada, which she said had “successfully struck a balance”.
A contentious element of the policy has been the income requirements included as part of the visa criteria. One of three requirements must be fulfilled:
The purpose of having income requirements is to ensure sponsors and their parents don’t have financial issues while they are here in New Zealand. Having a requirement “also reduces the chance visa holders rely on government-funded services and support”.
Officials said there was “no precise methodology” for determining what these requirements should be. A threshold was “blunt and somewhat arbitrary”, but officials said it should be seen in the wider context of wanting to balance access to the visa with ensuring the sponsors can support the volume of parents coming to New Zealand.
It was initially proposed that the threshold for sponsors be aligned with the existing parent residency visa, which requires a sponsor of one parent to earn 1.5x the median wage.
While acknowledging this would limit access and potentially reduce the visa’s appeal, officials believed income requirements would target higher-skilled workers and increase their financial means.
However, the minister’s adviser reference group (ARG) said migrant communities “may be highly critical” if the income thresholds were set too high.
As a result, two options to lower the threshold for sponsors were proposed. But officials said they “do not recommend these as they would increase the risk” of a significant increase in the volume of people wanting a visa and that sponsors may not have the means to fulfil their obligations.
One option was to lower the threshold to 80% of the median wage – this was not recommended – while the second was to match the threshold to the median wage. This second option was preferred by officials if the minister did choose to lower the threshold, which she did.
Stanford said on Wednesday that Cabinet believed this was a “reasonable compromise”.
“It was high enough for parents to be looked after, but low enough that there were a reasonable amount of migrants able to apply for the visa.
“There is also an avenue for parents to meet an income or funds requirement instead of the sponsor, this supports broader access while ensuring visa holders have sufficient financial means while onshore.”
Even so, Ricardo Menéndez March, the Greens’ immigration spokesman, told the Herald these income settings “exclude many families who have given so much to our country”.
“If the Government is concerned about the policy’s impact on infrastructure and health, they should be exploring tax reform and adequately invest in our crumbling health systems and infrastructure rather than keeping families apart.”
One of the risks identified through the process was that parents would become settled in New Zealand and lose ties to their homeland, making their return at the end of their visa more difficult.
“Without policy interventions, temporary visa holders could effectively become de facto residents in New Zealand, but without the rights that go along with it,” a paper to the minister from officials in February said.
Among the ways the minister intended to mitigate this risk was requiring successful parents to leave New Zealand for three months before renewing their visa. They also must leave during their third year in New Zealand and complete immigration medical forms again.
Officials noted in March that regardless of the conditions attached to the visa, “there is no way to entirely remove these risks” of “de facto settlement” and acknowledged that to “some extent they already exist with existing temporary visas”.
Stanford’s paper to her Cabinet colleagues said: “With a longer-term visitor visa there are inherent risks that parents become settled in New Zealand and do not wish to return home.”
While some visa holders will go on to apply for residence under a residency visa, “not all will be eligible or able to access the category”.
Menéndez March said that in five to 10 years, once the visas had expired, “we will have thousands of parents who have made New Zealand their home being ripped away from their children and country”.
“The Greens have long called for realistic and genuine pathways to residency for parents that aren’t catered only to high-income earners.”
Jamie Ensor is a political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. In 2025, he was a finalist for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.