NZ's Pacific Access Scheme: Boon, Blight or Both

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Don't miss the table at the bottom

America has its Green card visa scheme, a lottery that allows those selected to live and work in the "land of the free".  We have a similar scheme that recognizes  our special relations with the Pacific. The annual access visa lottery scheme allows anyone aged of 18 to 45  from some Pacific countries  to enter the draw. 

Thousands do so and all ballots are heavily oversubscribed. Read Philippa Tolley @nzpjt on RNZ for the full and more human report. Here I detail the bare essentials.

Some 250 Tongans, 250 people Fiji, 75 from Tuvalu and 75 from Kiribati will be granted provisional entry, but first English  they have nine months to find a job  — from the Pacific before they arrive in NZ . They also need to speak good English and pass police and health checks that all come with a fee.

Niueans, Cook Islanders and Tokelauan do not need a visa. They are New Zealanders.
 
Samoa has a a separate quota of 1,100 which includes family, so one applicant with a family of six uses up six places. This year there were 17,000 applications from Samoa, representing 43,000 people - nearly a quarter of the Pacific nation’s entire population. The much smaller nation of Tuvalu also put in its highest number of applicants since 2014.

For those successful, Tongan Immigration advisor, Mary Nau, says she would like the ballot system changed to offer more support. "Monitor those who are going to ensure that they succeed. There are people, I believe, that are struggling at the moment even after decades of living in New Zealand and the difficult thing is … [to] convince them that perhaps New Zealand is not the place for you, perhaps Tonga would be a better suit for you and your family ... But there is a sense of pride: 'My family will either see me as a failure or that I've not made it.'  So there is a sense once they make it there, there's no turning back."

New Zealand’s Pacific Peoples minister, Aupito William Sio, says the current system creates opportunities for bogus job offers and for people to spend a great deal of money to secure work, only to arrive here to find the job isn't what they expected it to be. But he certainly understands the pull to leave the warmth of the Pacific for more money in chilly New Zealand. “What they don't appreciate is they're not going to be living on their own land. They're not going to live on their own house. They're going to have to rent. And so all of it has to be appreciated."

 Immigration minister Iain Lees-Galloway is a supporter of the ballot system but acknowledges New Zealand's track record in welcoming and caring for Pasifika people is hardly unblemished. "Overall, we do respect the system and respect the people. It's not 100 percent perfect by any stretch of the imagination and, if you go back a little bit further than 10 years, there's some really glaring examples of where we horribly let down people who had come here from the Pacific."

The provisions required under the scheme, such as a good job, are important to make sure people can look after themselves and not be vulnerable to exploitation, he says. He’s keen to continue the special ties between this country and the rest of the region - but he too understands there is a need for change. "Clearly there is huge demand for the opportunity to come and live and work in New Zealand and we need to have a fair process for dealing with that,” he says.

“It is appropriate that we have a special set of settings for our Pacific neighbours... but saying that, I think it is timely for us to take a fresh look at our Pacific migration settings and see if it is working as well as it could for our neighbours and what opportunities there might be to do it better.”

Those who applied for this year's Pacific Access Scheme found out their fate a couple of weeks ago. But the many thousands who applied in Samoa are still on tenterhooks hoping their name is selected in the draw next week - and that the better life it promises really does exist.

The table is a summary of the present situation.

Ethnicity/ Country	Resident NZ 2013	% Born in NZ	Island Population 2017	% Island Population in NZ
Samoans	144138	62.7	196440	73.4
Tongans	60336	59.8	108020	55.6
Fijian - Fijians	14145	39.9	905502	22.7
Indo-Fijians	10929	17.0
Rotuman Fijians*	498	498	2002	24.9
Tuvaluans	3537	46.5	11192	31.6
New Zealand citizens
Cook Islanders	61839	77.4	17379	355.8
Niueans	23883	78.9	1624	1467.9
Tokelauans	7176	73.9	1499	478.7

Main source 2013 NZ Census. *Most live in mainland Fiji.

Other Pacific Islanders in NZ, about 7,000.                                A.C. Walsh

-- ACW