Shake-up at the border
The Government is making major changes to its controversial border exemptions.
A key change, from the end of next week, includes removing the need for partners and dependants of New Zealand citizens and residents to travel together to return home when they have a relationship-based visa or are ordinarily resident in New Zealand.
In addition, border exemptions have been granted to two syndicate teams who will challenge Emirates Team New Zealand for the 36th America’s Cup.
It comes after Stuff reported that 56 film production crew members were granted exemptions but a Transmission Gully engineer was not counted as critical to New Zealand.
It also follows a call from the National Party’s economic development spokeswoman, Judith Collins, urging the Government to explain why special permission was granted for the Avatar film crew to enter New Zealand but America’s Cup teams were still waiting for visa approval.
Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said the border restrictions helped to protect Kiwis from Covid-19, so the Government was taking steps to keep the country safe while ensuring families could reunite and support economic recovery.
A Cabinet paper, dated June 8, stated that the current requirement relating to family members travelling together created logistical difficulties for separated families.
‘‘This will be a great relief for families separated by the border closure,’’ Lees-Galloway said.
The bar for being granted an exception had been set high and remained high, he said.
‘‘Everyone coming in will still need to do 14 days of managed isolation or quarantine, so we are working within our current capacity of 3200 for the facilities run by the Ministry of Health.’’
However, Lees-Galloway and Agriculture and Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor are still considering how best to manage a range of issues relating to requests for border exceptions for the primary industries that may not meet the proposed criteria. They are set to report to Cabinet if it is necessary.
‘‘Everyone coming in will still need to do 14 days of managed isolation or quarantine.’’ Iain Lees-Galloway Immigration Minister
Monday’s Cabinet paper also proposed clarifying the meaning of the phrase ‘‘essential worker’’.
There would be an ongoing review of criteria for essential workers and the criteria but Cabinet retained the authority to amend the exceptions categories, or to determine a request for exceptions for a ‘‘class of workers’’ may not neatly fit the proposed criteria.
As part of this review, the Government will consider how border exceptions could apply to high-value investors.
As of June 10, there had been 15,331 requests for a border exception (across all categories) and 2914 of those were invited to apply for a visa.
About 2456 visa applications have been approved.
Figures for the subset of ‘‘other essential workers’’ show 2372 people had made requests and 237 individuals had been invited to apply.