Asylum claims shot up nearly 400 percent last year, not all of which were genuine.

New Zealand’s asylum policy offers some claimants an open work visa. Official advice to Minister for Immigration Erica Stanford said the rise in asylum claims is likely due, in part, to some claimants seeking to use this visa as a way to access New Zealand’s public service and job market. Officials have warned any solutions Stanford implements to dissuade disingenuous claimants cannot come at the expense of New Zealand’s obligations to genuine asylum seekers.

As Stanford seeks advice on how to deal with what she called an ※explosion§ in asylum claims, net migration via other pathways has outnumbered the few thousand individuals who have claimed asylum in New Zealand. While the total number is far outweighed by net migration, the large percentage increase has also put heavy pressure on the processing capabilities of Immigration New Zealand, resulting in a backlog growing in tandem with claims.

In 2019, before the pandemic closed borders, 502 people arrived in New Zealand and claimed asylum. Only 342 of these applications reached a decision - some would have been withdrawn - but a total of 124 claims were accepted.?In the financial year ending 2022, the number of applicants increased to 780, including 104 approvals.

For 2023, a record 2345 claims were made - only 704 of which have so far been decided. While application numbers have increased by nearly 400 percent, the pressure they place on Immigration NZ’s processing department has seen decision rates plummet. In 2019, 68 percent of applications reached a decision; last year, it was 30 percent.

According to a briefing to Stanford released under the Official Information Act, about a third of asylum claims in this country are found to meet the criteria for protection each year. But this isn’t evenly split across countries. Between July 2013 and January 2024 only 18 percent of Indian claims were accepted while 61 percent of Chinese applications were approved.?

Advice to the minister said Immigration NZ was treating visa applications from certain countries with additional scrutiny. Visitor visa applications from China, for example, will soon be required to come with a certified English translation to help ＆triage’ claims made down the line.

The rise in asylum claims in New Zealand is not unique. Irregular and forced migration rates are on the rise, according to the briefing, but spurious claims ※are also a means of gaining work rights in New Zealand§. Asylum claimants in Aotearoa can be granted a temporary open work visa if they are otherwise unable to support themselves. This is a very flexible visa, one Stanford called ※the golden ticket§ in an address last week.?

While asylum claims are processed, someone with this visa is free to work in essentially any job in the country. The advice said some people were ※likely using this pathway because they are seeking access to New Zealand’s labour market§. The open work visa potentially gives claimants the chance to find alternative pathways to staying on; official advice noted some of the most common outs were the accredited employer and essential skills work visas, or by applying to study at university.?

But in advising Stanford on how to approach the problem, the briefing stressed that any measures taken would have to be proportional to the scale of the situation and come without posing a barrier to genuine asylum seekers. The total number asylum seekers in 2023 accounted for barely over a percent of the total migration gain. According to Immigration’s website for this visa, only a fifth of these claimants will have their application accepted.

While Stanford may be urgently seeking a way to stop the trend, her briefing said ※we need to ensure good management of applications for temporary visas so that the contributions to our tourism, education, and labour markets from genuine applicants are not undermined§.

In New Zealand, asylum seekers are granted access to the public health system, their children can go to school, and they can claim a benefit if they are unable to work: a much more flexible reality than the one facing a claimant in most of our Migration Five partner countries. Canada, too, offers many of these services, including employment, after an individual has been found eligible to lodge a claim. But the United States only offers employment after 150 days.

In the UK, asylum seekers are only allowed to work when their claim has been processed without a decision for a year through no fault of their own. In this already-specific situation, their working rights are restricted to jobs on the shortage list. And if their claim is refused, those rights are immediately withdrawn and the individual is expected to leave the country.

In New Zealand, you are unable to apply for a different visa if you have an asylum claim being processed. But, in the year or more it can take for that application to be processed, an individual may find a pathway to life in New Zealand through a skills shortage or an accredited employer visa. If they want to take advantage of that opportunity, they have to withdraw their asylum claim.

Of the 780 claimants in the 2022-2023 period, a fifth withdrew their application. Of this fifth, a third - 50 people - did so around the same time as they lodged an application for a different New Zealand visa. If that trend holds for the next year’s asylum claimants, 153 people would be expected to do the same. The total number of people using this pathway is relatively minuscule, but the percentage increase is significant, resulting in an equally large increase to the workloads of application processors.

A few steps have already been taken to address the problem. More airline liaison officers have been deployed to ※key transit points§ to flag down ineligible travellers, and Immigration NZ has worked on identifying specific clusters of related asylum claimants whose applications can be fast-tracked and processed in tandem.?

Stanford told Newsroom she had committed a further $10 million to Immigration NZ to bolster their existing processes ※so that we don’t end up with a backlog that’s years long§.?

Her immigration focus has been on transitioning to a user-pays model. The sum cost of processing procedures, migrant services such as English training and investing in a new IT system were steep, and she said ※it’s important that we claim all of that back from the migrants, who are the ones who benefit from the system§.

Although it was not just the migrants who stood to benefit. At her speech last week, Stanford told the crowd that if New Zealand wanted ※to grow our exports, build infrastructure and rebuild the economy, we need to ensure that we can attract and retain the skilled people that we need§.?