Would National’s visa fee hike put off migrants?

Fee cost recovery can be counterproductive. (Image: Getty)

Thu, 31 Aug 2023

The National party plans to help pay for its tax package by earning an additional $123 million a year from immigration fees, a more than 40% hike.In the current financial year, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) expects to spend $374m on assessing and processing visa applications and get back around $269m in fees.Until covid struck, visa processing used to be a service that was fully paid for by fees while other parts of the immigration budget, such as policymaking, enforcement, refugee resettlement and promotion campaigns, were generally covered by...

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