Parents Category Resident Visa

Parents Category Resident Visa

New Zealand is committed to supporting family connections. Hence, if you have an adult New Zealand citizen or resident child/children who meet eligible sponsor requirements and the minimum income requirement, you may be able to live in New Zealand permanently with the Parent category visa NZ.

It is a two-stage process. In the first stage, you will need to send an Expression of Interest (EOI), explaining how you meet the requirements to be sponsored by your child alone, or your child and their partner. If your EOI is selected from the selection pool, in the second stage you will be Invited To Apply (ITA) for residence.

After a long suspension period, the Parent Resident Visa restarted on 12 October 2022 with different requirements for sponsors:

• Sponsors will now need to earn 1.5 times the New Zealand median wage, and this limit will increase by half the median wage for each joint sponsor or additional parent.
• Two adult children, not just an adult child and their partner, can now jointly sponsor a parent.

NZ will make its first selection of EOIs since the program was paused in 2016 on November 14, 2022, for EOIs submitted before October 12, 2022, and will continue to hold regular selections every three months after that.

EOIs submitted after October 12, 2022, will enter a ballot, with selections commencing in August 2023. New Zealand residents and citizens who have lived in the country for at least three years are eligible to sponsor their parent’s application for residence if they meet the relevant requirements.

Grandparents and legal guardians may also be able to apply for residence under this Parent category visa NZ. However, you are not eligible for this visa if you have any dependent children.

INZ has increased the quota for available visas under the Parent Resident Visa Category to 2,500, up from the current 1,000 available visas.

To find out more about how to apply for Parents Category Resident Visa, assessment criteria and the pitfalls that you should be aware of, please call us today on +64 9 379 0219 or email contact@nzimmigration.info