Election 2026: Labour unsure how many people will come to NZ under new Pacific Island visa policy
The Labour Party cannot say how many additional Pacific Islanders will come to New Zealand under its proposal of visa-waiver travel.
The political party announced on Thursday morning it would expand visa-waiver access to citizens from the Pacific Islands Forum nations.
A Visa Waiver Visitor Visa allows citizens of particular countries to travel to New Zealand for up to three months without needing to first apply for a visa or pay a visa fee.
Travellers still need to obtain a New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA), which requires holders to have good health, good character, genuine reasons to come, enough money for expenses and plans to leave at the end of their stay.
Labour deputy leader and Pacific peoples spokeswoman Carmel Sepuloni said expanding visa-waiver travel to the Pacific Islands would make it more affordable for families to reunite.
According to Immigration New Zealand, the fee for a visitor visa for Pacific nationals has been reduced from $216 to $161 temporarily for 12 months from June this year. This has been done to “support travel and strengthen New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific”.
Sepuloni said the “cost of travelling to see loved ones can make being together feel out of touch”.
“I’ve seen first-hand the heartbreak of loved ones missing weddings, funerals and other important moments, because they couldn’t secure a visa in time due to cost and other barriers,” she said.
“Labour greatly values our Pacific communities and understands how much this change will mean for them.”
When the Heraldasked how many additional people will come to New Zealand as a result of such a policy change, she was unable to answer.
“We’re not entirely sure of the numbers that will come over,” Sepuloni said.
“There’s some work that will need to be done once we’re in Government with the Pacific countries to make this all work. The system is there, so we just need to make it apply to Pacific Island Forum countries.”
Asked about the potential impact of more travellers on services in New Zealand, the number of which Labour didn’t know, Sepuloni said the policy was an “exciting prospect” as well as the “fair” and “right thing to do”.
“It’s good for the Pacific and it’s good for Pacific New Zealanders as well.”
It’s not the first time Labour has sought to allow visa-free travel for Pacific Islanders to New Zealand.
In 1986, the then Labour Government granted visa-free travel to a number of Pacific Island countries but backtracked on some countries’ access within 10 weeks after a significant increase in travellers.
According to Pacific Islands Monthly reporting, between December 1 and February 18 when the policy was in place, estimates put arrivals at 11,500, up to five times the arrivals during the same time the previous year.
There had also been concerns from ministers at the time that some visa-free entrants intended to overstay, the reporting at the time said. However, as visa-free travel allowed people to be in New Zealand for three months, and it had yet to be three months since the scheme started, no one had overstayed by the time it ended.
The Labour-led Government in 2003 also removed visa-waiver travel from Tuvalu, Kiribati and Nauru to put those nations in line with the other Pacific Island countries.
At the time, a press release from then Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel said that following the 1986 change, “a surge in visitor numbers meant visa requirements for most Pacific countries were reimposed shortly afterwards”.
“The visa requirement policy does not detract from New Zealand’s ties with the Pacific, which are as warm and strong as ever,” Dalziel said.
“However, it is important that the adverse impacts of immigration are properly managed. Work and study already require visas so the change will not be that significant.”
Sepuloni said on Thursday that New Zealand in 1986 didn’t have the same “electronic system that we have in place now” and considering that visa-waiver travel applied to a large number of countries now, “it’s the right time to ensure that we make that available to our Pacific neighbours”.
National spokeswoman Erica Stanford, the current Minister of Immigration, called it a “deeply cynical move” and said Sepuloni should know how many people would come as a result.
“The Labour Party did this already in 1986 and they had to slam the doors shut in around two and a half months because of the huge numbers of people that flooded into New Zealand. From the Cabinet paper that I’ve seen, only half returned.”
She said New Zealand had a “very good, close working relationship with the Pacific”.
“But there is a process we go through to make sure that we make these decisions in the best interests of New Zealand.”
Stanford said it would be “much worse” for this country’s Pacific Island relationships “if we did this again and then had to close the borders again really quickly”.
The proper process for deciding upon visa-waiver countries included considering “overstaying rates” and other risks, Stanford said.
Data from Immigration New Zealand (INZ) showed the top 10 nationalities of people estimated to have overstayed their visas as of July 1, 2026. Citizens from China topped the list at 2694, followed by Tonga (2541) and the United States (1981). Other Pacific Island nations in the top 10 were Samoa at fifth (1462) and Fiji at tenth (512).
That data covered “approximately 30 years of immigration and border movement data, reflecting the period since INZ introduced electronic record”.
The Government agency also looked at the number of people who arrived between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2026 who were recorded as having overstayed their visa.
The US topped this list, with 925 individuals or 0.1% of the total temporary arrivals in that time period of that nationality.
In this period, there were 31,054 temporary visa arrivals of people of Tongan nationality, with 666 recorded to be overstaying – 2.14%.
That’s the highest recorded overstaying rate of those listed by Immigration New Zealand and compares to a 0.13% when looking at the overstaying rate for all temporary arrivals in that period. Samoa followed Tonga at 1.25% and then Vietnam at 0.61%.
Sepuloni said those coming to New Zealand from a visa-waiver country “have to follow the rules when they come here”.
The Green Party’s Marama Davidson said her party was on board with this idea before Labour were.
“I hope that means that we can see, if we are in the next Government, that we could prioritise those changes.”
The Government is currently trialling allowing people from the Pacific to travel to New Zealand from Australia with an NZeTA rather than a visa. They must still hold an eligible Australian visa.
According to Immigration New Zealand, three months after changes were introduced last year, 82% of visitors from Pacific Island Forum countries said they travelled to New Zealand specifically because of the NZeTA option becoming available.
Jamie Ensor is the NZ Herald’s chief political reporter, based in the press gallery at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist in 2025 for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.