1 00:00:00,450 --> 00:00:08,195 [Erica Stanford] As the Finance Minister has said, it is about retaining that, that great talent, and it is migrant neutral, you know, these are people who are already here. 2 00:00:08,195 --> 00:00:10,435 Twelve minutes later, same stand-up: 3 00:00:10,385 --> 00:00:16,929 [Erica Stanford] So it will not only retain the people that we've got, it will attract migrants to come to New Zealand knowing that they've got a pathway. 4 00:00:17,029 --> 00:00:24,277 Temporary. It's how most migrants arrive in New Zealand, and it's what ministers call the India visas. This is where temporary leads. 5 00:00:25,277 --> 00:00:29,674 December 2023: net migration, 126,000. 6 00:00:29,724 --> 00:00:37,179 [Erica Stanford] So net migration for the calendar year, 126,000 people. Is that a sustainable number? That's not a sustainable number. 7 00:00:37,229 --> 00:00:44,207 In April she tightened the rules, and told RNZ: "I tell you what, next year, I might be saying, loosen them again." 8 00:00:44,257 --> 00:01:00,907 To hire a migrant for a lower-skilled job, employers had to advertise it through Work and Income first. Her own Cabinet paper counted the results: 2,460 jobs advertised, nearly 3,100 suitable New Zealand job seekers. Only 45 of them were hired. 9 00:01:01,557 --> 00:01:09,266 The paper said some employers saw the rule as a "tick box" exercise, and were "actively avoiding" hiring people on Jobseeker support. 10 00:01:09,266 --> 00:01:17,238 Four months later, Cabinet made that check a self-declaration, dropped the median-wage rule, and cut the experience required from three years to two. 11 00:01:17,288 --> 00:01:20,950 In May, defending his immigration settings, the Prime Minister: 12 00:01:20,900 --> 00:01:31,226 [Christopher Luxon] We can build the houses, we can actually make sure that we've got the vacancies that we have in the economy filled, while also knowing we've got to get our people off unemployment, out of welfare and to work as well. 13 00:01:32,226 --> 00:01:42,013 September 2025: two new residence pathways. One needs no qualification at all: three years' experience from anywhere, then two in New Zealand. 14 00:01:42,063 --> 00:01:50,608 [Erica Stanford] Is this a pathway to citizenship? Well, look, it's a pathway to residence and eventually citizenship if they meet all of the criteria. 15 00:01:50,708 --> 00:02:00,096 That's the funnel. Students, graduates, work visas, company transfers. Two years here. Residence. Five years on, citizenship. 16 00:02:00,096 --> 00:02:05,949 The number of migrants here on temporary visas has increased by a third since September 2023. 17 00:02:06,949 --> 00:02:13,200 December 2025: the India deal. Asked if it would add to the numbers coming in, the Prime Minister: 18 00:02:13,150 --> 00:02:20,176 [Christopher Luxon] No, it's literally 1,700 visas, which are component parts of every FTA. 19 00:02:20,276 --> 00:02:33,929 Ministers talk about one door: 5,000 visas at any one time. The treaty has two more with no numerical limit at all: students, and company Specialists, who need no degree and face no labour market test. 20 00:02:33,979 --> 00:02:43,295 McClay, in a letter: "the FTA does not create uncapped immigration." His Government's own briefing, on the company-transfer visas: "Not applying numerical limits." 21 00:02:43,345 --> 00:02:45,963 In January he'd told a select committee: 22 00:02:45,913 --> 00:02:55,000 [Todd McClay] What I have read in the media is categorically wrong. It is false. The FTA is silent on the number of students who would come here. 23 00:02:55,050 --> 00:03:01,634 The signed text: "Neither Party shall impose any numerical limits on the admission and entry of students." 24 00:03:02,634 --> 00:03:17,256 Since a new rule in October, time on the 5,000 visas ministers talk about can't count towards residence. Time through the two doors they don't mention can. Neither door is new. What the treaty adds is that New Zealand can't cap them. 25 00:03:17,356 --> 00:03:30,537 Door one: company Specialists. Britain had uncapped company transfers too. In 2015, its migration advisers found 72 per cent of applications were for Indian nationals, 86 per cent of those in IT. 26 00:03:30,587 --> 00:03:41,327 They saw "at least a potential" to undercut British workers. Britain's answer was a salary threshold, now £52,500. New Zealand's company-transfer visa has none. 27 00:03:41,377 --> 00:03:52,543 Britain sets its threshold in its own immigration rules, so it can raise it. Our deal rules out a labour market test "or other procedures of similar effect", so a threshold may not even be allowed. 28 00:03:52,593 --> 00:04:04,201 The Ministry says these visas "do not provide pathways to permanent residency through the skilled migrant category". Asked whether a Specialist could qualify, it gave no answer: it "has not undertaken any such analysis." 29 00:04:04,301 --> 00:04:18,503 Door two: students. The treaty guarantees Indian graduates up to two years' work after a bachelor's. On 24 August, the points route cut its New Zealand work requirement to at most two years. The treaty took force 57 days later. 30 00:04:18,553 --> 00:04:28,994 Canada capped study permits in 2024. In two years, permits for Indian students fell by two-thirds. This August, US arrivals of Indian students fell 39 per cent. 31 00:04:29,044 --> 00:04:38,918 Immigration advisers told RNZ agents began steering students here instead. In the three months to September, new Indian students were up 47 per cent on a year earlier. 32 00:04:38,968 --> 00:04:44,306 And this year, India is New Zealand's biggest source of offshore student-visa applications. 33 00:04:44,356 --> 00:04:49,073 Australia's India deal does not prohibit caps on student numbers. Ours does. 34 00:04:49,123 --> 00:04:55,485 Parliament's own committee conceded the deal "limits future Governments' abilities to introduce a cap on students". 35 00:04:55,535 --> 00:04:59,398 Asked if Indian migrant numbers would rise, the Trade Minister: 36 00:04:59,348 --> 00:05:05,653 [Todd McClay] You would expect it to increase, surely? Well, arguably, let's wait and see. 37 00:05:06,653 --> 00:05:21,651 The Ministry says the residence changes and the deal were considered together "only in very specific instances". Three briefings. Two are still withheld in full. The third came back with 45 paragraphs blacked out, under "Policy design choices and options". 38 00:05:21,701 --> 00:05:28,371 Even the deal's economic case assumed it adds no workers, though the Foreign Ministry had asked for labour mobility to be modelled. 39 00:05:28,471 --> 00:05:35,632 Add it up: no cap on two doors. No salary threshold. Two years to residence. And no analysis of what follows. 40 00:05:35,732 --> 00:05:39,099 And in February, on low net migration, Stanford: 41 00:05:39,049 --> 00:05:47,672 [Erica Stanford] So I'm confident as the economy improves, that our net migration figures will get back to what that, their sort of 20-year average. 42 00:05:47,822 --> 00:05:53,847 Temporary visas. A pathway to residence. And a treaty that stops New Zealand capping two of the doors.