Work Visa Changes - Back to the Future?

Great Scott!

I almost announced that loudly yesterday afternoon, as I was trying to enjoy a sunny Sunday afternoon, before being bombarded with rule changes from INZ - why they release these over the weekend or on Friday afternoons, is beyond me. However the changes to the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) scheme, as promised by our new Minister, have now arrived, seemingly having travelled to us from the recent past (albeit not in a DeLorean).

For the most part, the newly announced changes are in line with the signals that this Government has been sending, having inherited the mess left behind by Labour in late 2023, yet none of it is revolutionary and in fact apart from one or two items, most of what we have now, is policy we had prior to the AEWV, covered under the previous Essential Skills Work Visa program.

That isn’t overly surprising, given change had to be made quickly to address the issues with the AEWV and its operations and the most efficient way to achieve that, without having to come up with anything new, was to simply roll back to policy that was tried and tested.

We break down those changes and their impacts on applicants and employers in this article.