Our recommendations

We recommend that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which Immigration New Zealand is a part of:

1. prioritise work to enable applicants for skilled residence visas to easily track application progress and to enable the smooth transfer of applicants between different types of visas;
2. include a specific focus on skilled residence visas in all aspects of its monitoring of, and reporting on, the visa system;
3. make better use of the information it already collects to monitor the effectiveness of the skilled residence visa system for specific groups of applicants and to help it target improvements;
4. review its approach to reporting on the performance of the immigration system to ensure that applicants, Parliament, and the public can gain a clear understanding of how well the skilled residence visa system is performing; and
5. develop an approach to reviewing and reporting on the long-term outcomes of the skilled residence visa system that will allow Immigration New Zealand, Parliament, and the public to see how well the system is working to attract and retain the skills that New Zealand needs over time.