New Zealand First will offer a two-year clemency period for Pacific Islanders who overstay their visas, the Winston Peters-led party has announced.
While announcing a suite of immigration policies on Friday, the party said the extra time would not be available to any other nationalities, in recognition of its “unique and close bond” with the Pacific.
NZ First leader Winston Peters
Calvin Samuel
It said the 24-month period would be “to facilitate any Pacific overstayer to apply to remain in the country legally on a valid visa”, and those who failed to do so would be deported after the period lapsed, “permanently ineligible to apply for any visa in the future, due to their heightened risk of reoffending.”
Other policies included a referendum on a 20,000 resident visa cap, stricter birthright citizenship rules, and broader liability for deportation.
The party is also demanding one of its MPs be made Minister of Immigration in the next government.
Peters has previously accepted a petition by migrant rights campaigner Anae Arthur Anae that advocates a visa-waiver for Pacific nationals for up to three months, which is an entitlement given to over 130 countries elsewhere.
Anae, praising the new policy, said it’s all too common for Pacific islanders, relying on immigration consultants, to have incomplete documentation.
“Since 2008, [Immigration NZ] has been dealing with third parties on behalf of Pacific people,” he said.
“It goes like this: someone comes along, says ‘I can help you’. They pay them a fee to do all the documentation, and they sit back and wait, thinking everything has been done.”
“Meanwhile, it’s only partially done, no follow-up, and then these people are regarded as overstayers and deported.”
He said the extra time to allow for islanders to get their affairs in order could help them avoid this kind of situation.
“Why do they keep hammering us about overstaying all the time as excuses to their incompetence in providing a service for people fairly?”
RNZ
Immigration NZ officials have recently batted off scrutiny in Parliament over how the agency determines overstay risk per nationality, which tends to single out Pacific countries despite a relatively small number of arrivals.
It revealed that this risk, combined with factors such as national security and biosecurity, has given INZ cause to advise cabinet against visa waivers to Pacific nationals direct from their home country.
In its most recent estimate, INZ said around 20,980 people currently in the country had overstayed their visa – 2599 of whom were Tongan, 2577 Chinese, and 2213 American.
Between July 2023 and 2025, Tonga had the highest overstay risk: 472 of their 24,425 temporary arrivals, or nearly two percent. Samoa followed, at 1.7 percent.
The United States had nearly double the amount of overstayers as Tonga did at 894. However, INZ deemed them a lower risk because that figure was just 0.13 percent of their arrivals.
The US, Great Britain, India and China, whose nationals receive an NZeTA on arrival in New Zealand for three months, all had higher overstay levels than Samoa.
“We consider that there is a strong rationale for maintaining current policy settings,” Immigration policy manager Stacey O’Dowd told Parliament’s Petitions Select Committee.
Anae, whose petition is still being considered by the Select Committee, said it was an injustice that weighs heavy on the Pasifika community.
“We’ve got to make applications, can’t even get here for a funeral,” he said.
“I had a case recently of someone who submitted an application to come to her brother’s funeral. She gave them the death certificate, she got her visa to come to his funeral 1 month after the funeral. Explain that one to me.
Visa waivers for Fijians, Samoans and Tongans were abolished in February 1987, three months after they were introduced. Waivers for Tuvaluans, Ni-Kiribati and Dei-Naoero were similarly scrapped in 2003.
As of this year, any Pacific national can get in on an NZeTA if they go through Australia first, a country that also lacks a visa waiver for the region.
