The government is celebrating a $25 million boost from wealthy migrants, but questions remain about the visa’s wider economic impact, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
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Big names, big money
Immigration minister Erica Stanford is hailing the revamped Active Investor Plus visa as a major success, reports The Post’s Thomas Manch, with more than $25 million already transferred and around $1 billion worth of applications in the pipeline. Launched on April 1, the updated scheme lowered the investment threshold, removed the English language requirement, and slashed in-country time obligations. Applicants under the new “growth” category need to invest a minimum of $5 million in higher-risk assets over three years and spend just 21 days in New Zealand during that time.
“It’s been so successful, and the people are amazing,” said Stanford, claiming some applicants are tech co-founders of “very big, well-known companies that you would probably use every day”. The majority of applications have come from the United States, followed by China, Hong Kong and Germany.
Not all capital is created equal
It’s certainly a tidy sum of money, but will it meaningfully grow the economy? Writing in Newsroom, Brent Burmester, a business lecturer at the University of Auckland, says passive capital injections into funds or existing businesses rarely drive widespread economic transformation. “Wanting residency and having the capital to secure it is not a measure or indicator of future entrepreneurial breakthrough,” he argues.
Instead, Burmester supports prioritising migrants with ambition, skills and drive over those with simply a big chequebook. “The research is very clear on this: such immigrants grow an economy like ours and give established Kiwis a reason to stay. They typically demand less and deliver more. Not because they are wealthy, but because they are not. Yet.”
A residence visa without residents?
Under the new rules, investors may spend as little as a week a year in New Zealand, raising concerns about their long-term contributions to the local business environment. If they’re hardly ever here, it seems doubtful that they can engage meaningfully with the companies their money supports or with the communities they’re theoretically helping grow. Immigration lawyer Nick Mason tells Morning Report the requirement “does seem very minimal” but in his experience, golden visa holders spend a lot longer in-country than they have to.
RNZ’s Liu Chen also reports that potential Chinese applicants have found their way into the country blocked due to their inability to use China’s Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) scheme, which is virtually the only pathway for individuals from China to transfer capital overseas. One immigration lawyer told Chen that excluding QDII effectively shuts off the golden visa to most Chinese investors, despite the government claiming the programme is “country neutral”.
Parent Boost visa raises equity concerns
While wealthy investors are being courted, many migrant families are reacting to a more personal policy change. The new Parent Boost visa, announced on Sunday, will allow parents of citizens and residents to stay in New Zealand for up to 10 years. Though widely welcomed, community leaders warn it is largely out of reach for the working-class migrants who need it. “For them, the Parent Boost Visa is a promise they cannot afford to fulfill,” writes Vineeta Rao in Indian Newslink.
Applicants must meet high financial thresholds – $160,000 in savings for a single applicant with no other income, or $250,000 for a couple – that skew the visa in favour of migrants from wealthier countries. The result is a tiered system, Rao writes, that effectively “[sidelines] many Indian families, despite their cultural and emotional capability to support their parents here”.
