New Zealand votes on 7 November 2026, and immigration has become a noticeably louder campaign issue than it was six months ago.
Worth holding onto while you read the rest of this: it is louder among politicians than among voters. In the July 2026 Ipsos Issues Monitor, immigration did not feature among the issues New Zealanders named as most important. Inflation and the cost of living led on 62 percent, healthcare on 38 percent and the economy on 34 percent.
That gap matters for anyone trying to read the campaign. A policy that dominates a week of coverage is not necessarily a policy with a constituency behind it, and proposals announced in September are not law in November — or ever, in most cases.
This is a full rewrite of the guide we first published here in April. Since then the parties have put actual positions on the table — ACT on 1 May, and New Zealand First and Labour on 10 and 11 September — so we have rebuilt it rather than topped it up.
Where the parties stand
We've set these out as neutrally as we can. Our job is to tell you what has been proposed, not who to vote for.
National
Erica Stanford is the current Minister of Immigration. National's position going into the election is broadly a continuation of the settings it has implemented — the Going for Growth programme, the Skilled Migrant Category reforms that took effect on 24 August, the New Occupation List replacing ANZSCO, and the shift toward treating temporary work visas as pathways to residence rather than rolling extensions.
Notably, Stanford has said she does not support ACT's proposal to abolish permanent resident visas, despite ACT being a coalition partner. That's a useful signal about what would survive a coalition negotiation.
ACT
David Seymour set out ACT's immigration proposals in a speech on 1 May 2026. They include reviewing the skilled jobs list annually so it tracks actual economic gaps, barring new migrants from welfare access for their first five years, and establishing a dedicated overstayer enforcement unit. ACT has also proposed abolishing permanent resident visas — the proposal National has publicly declined to back.
The broad framing is market-driven: fewer bureaucratic barriers to employers hiring the workers they need, alongside tighter rules on welfare access and enforcement.
New Zealand First
NZ First released more than a dozen immigration policies on 11 September, the most extensive package from any party. They include:
- Restricting birthright citizenship so only children of citizens are automatically entitled to citizenship at birth
- Doubling the qualifying periods for citizenship and permanent residence from five years to ten
- Increasing application fees for citizenship and permanent residence
- Preventing asylum seekers who have applied for a work visa in New Zealand from being eligible
- Preventing asylum seekers from using temporary work rights while their claim is assessed
- Making all visa holders ineligible for jobseeker support, the accommodation supplement or any other benefit during their first ten years
- Limiting voting rights to New Zealand citizens
- Restricting work rights for international students
- A referendum on capping the number of resident visas granted each year
Winston Peters has framed the party's position as favouring "smart, controlled" immigration rather than opposition to immigration as such, with an emphasis on long-term domestic workforce planning.
Labour
Labour released its immigration policy on 11 September, with immigration spokesperson Phil Twyford fronting it. The headline items are doubling the time it takes to get permanent residence, a citizenship pathway for children born here to undocumented parents who have lived in New Zealand continuously, and a review of the financial criteria for parent visas. The framing is that immigration should be planned around what the workforce, housing and infrastructure can actually support.
Twyford was also sharply critical of the tone of the debate itself, calling it a "dumpster fire" and arguing New Zealand should not follow Europe and the United States in demonising migrants and refugees.
Labour has opposed parts of the Government's Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill while stating its support for a robust and well-managed immigration system.
The Greens
Ricardo Menendez March has argued that New Zealand's problems of low wages and a tax system weighted toward work rather than wealth are not caused by migrants, and characterised tough-on-immigration positioning as politicians looking for problems. The Greens' historical emphasis has been on expanded humanitarian pathways and climate-related migration from the Pacific.
Te Pāti Māori
Te Pāti Māori had not released a specific 2026 immigration policy at the time of the most recent published cross-party reviews. Its 2020 position proposed pausing immigration until housing supply caught up with demand, which is worth knowing as background but should not be assumed to be its 2026 position.
What this means if you have a visa or an application
This is the part most election coverage skips, so let's be concrete.
Nothing changes before 7 November. Current instructions apply to applications lodged under them. A campaign announcement has no legal effect whatsoever.
Almost nothing changes immediately afterward either. Immigration instructions are amended through a process that takes months. Even a government formed quickly and committed to a change has to draft it, consult where required, amend the operational manual and give effect to it. The changes that took effect on 24 August this year were announced in September 2025 — eleven months.
MMP means most proposals get traded away. Under a coalition, the policies that survive are the ones two or three parties can live with. ACT's permanent resident visa proposal is already publicly opposed by its largest coalition partner. NZ First's ten-year residence qualifying period would need a partner willing to wear it. Judge proposals by their likely support, not their volume.
The direction of travel is more consistent than the rhetoric. Look past the framing and there is broad agreement across parties on enforcement against exploitation, on skills targeting, and on immigration as a pathway to settlement rather than churn. Where they differ sharply is on humanitarian pathways, welfare access, and citizenship and residence qualifying periods.
Should you lodge before or after the election?
We are asked this constantly, and the honest answer is that election timing is a poor reason to make a decision either way.
Lodge when your case is ready. An application submitted early, with a qualification assessment still pending or evidence that doesn't yet hold together, is a weak application regardless of who wins in November. A strong application lodged in December is worth more than a rushed one lodged in October.
The one genuine exception is where a change has already been announced with a date attached — that is a real deadline and worth planning around. A campaign proposal is not. We track confirmed changes on our immigration updates page, and where something has a date, we say so.
If you're weighing timing on a specific case, a free 15-minute consultation will give you a straight answer. Call +64 9 213 1677 or message us on WhatsApp.
A note on how to read the next six weeks
Immigration is unusually easy to campaign on and unusually slow to change. That combination produces a lot of noise between now and 7 November.
Two habits will serve you well. First, distinguish an announcement from an instruction — a press release describes intent, and the operational manual describes the rules, and the two often differ in the detail that decides cases. Second, be careful about advice that arrives with urgency attached. Election periods reliably produce pressure to "apply now before it's too late," and it is worth knowing that the people saying it most loudly are usually selling something.
Our own position on the substance is that this is a matter for voters, not for us. What we can tell you is what has been proposed, what would be required for it to happen, and whether it affects the application in front of you.