Babies With Bath Water

If you are not familiar with it, there is a great saying “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” which essentially means you want to avoid getting rid of something good or positive, whilst trying to remove something bad or unwanted.

Sometimes, dealing with Immigration New Zealand, can feel a bit like trying to catch the baby, once they (INZ) have thrown the bath full of water off of a very large cliff.

For anyone that follows my regular posts (I know there are a least a few of you), you will be very familiar with the ups, downs and sometimes sideways of dealing with the NZ immigration system. This is particularly relevant now and something I have written a fair bit on over the last few months.

Since we reopened the borders in 2022, unleashing the newly minted, Accredited Employer Work Visa system on to employers and applicants, INZ has been pushed, shoved and prodded in as many different directions as we have had Immigration Ministers (and we have had a fair few).

When that system was rolled out and when the borders did open up, there was an enormous demand for migrant labour - having been locked up in our little island paradise for two and a half years, we were starved of skills, suffering from record low unemployment and in desperate need of kick-starting the economy. Unfortunately this new Work Visa system, being dropped on employers who were frantic to bring in skills, was a recipe for disaster.

Read the full blog on our immigration website