New Zealand

The routes available here

There are two gates, and they belong to different people. The employer's gate is accreditation: until a New Zealand employer holds AEWV accreditation and an approved job check covering the specific role, there is no visa for you to apply for. Your gate is the points test or the occupation test. Clearing one and failing the other produces nothing, which is why the sequence matters more here than the strength of a CV.

The Accredited Employer Work Visa is the workhorse. It gives you up to five years for an ANZSCO skill level 1 to 3 job, or three years for skill level 4 or 5, and it lets you study for up to three months in any 12-month period. The offer must be full-time, meaning at least 30 hours a week, and it must come from an accredited employer with a job check that covers that job. English is tested where the job sits at skill level 3 to 5. The fee starts at NZD $1,540 and 80% of applications are decided within seven weeks.

Accreditation is a real hurdle rather than a formality, and it is worth understanding the order of operations because it is where timelines die. The employer applies for accreditation first. Only then can it apply for a job check, and a job check must be filed within 90 days of the job advertisement closing. A job check is valid for six months, or until accreditation ends, whichever comes first, and one application can cover multiple positions with the same job, pay, location and minimum requirements. The worker applies after that, using a link the employer sends. Immigration New Zealand publishes a searchable list of accredited employers, updated daily, so the claim can be checked before you resign anything.

The Green List is the part of the system that rewards a specific occupation rather than a total. Tier 1 roles lead to a Straight to Residence Visa: age 55 or younger, a full-time offer in a listed Tier 1 role from an accredited employer, and residence granted before you move. Cost starts at NZD $6,450 and 80% are decided within four months. Tier 2 roles lead to a Work to Residence Visa, which is residence earned after the fact. You need 24 months in a Tier 2 job inside the 30 months immediately before applying, in a role that is permanent or fixed-term for at least 12 months, with an accredited employer.

The Skilled Migrant Category catches everyone whose occupation is not printed on the Green List. It is a resident visa from the start, it costs from NZD $6,450, and it now runs three pathways rather than one. The Points-based pathway asks for six skilled resident points. The Skilled Work Experience pathway drops the degree requirement and asks for at least five years of directly relevant work, two of them skilled and in New Zealand. The Trades and Technician pathway asks for a relevant qualification plus four years of post-qualification experience, 18 months of it in New Zealand. All three require a skilled job or job offer with an accredited employer. Clearing the points gate does not close the employer gate.

One more thing sits underneath all of it. New Zealand age-gates its residence routes: every resident visa in the table requires you to be 55 or younger when you apply. That single line removes the entire structure for anyone older, and there is no points surplus, salary or seniority that buys around it.

What is structurally different about this country

New Zealand screens the employer before it screens the migrant, and that rewrites what a job search is. There is no route where you arrive, look around, and then find work that qualifies you. The employer is accredited or nothing happens. There is also no self-petitioned residence category here — no equivalent of a filing you can make on the strength of your own record with no employer behind the job. Every permanent route in the table runs through an accredited employer, and that is the sharpest structural difference between this country and the talent systems it is usually compared with.

The six points are not a scale you can creep toward. They are a target met from one category. You claim three to six points from occupational registration, a qualification, or income — one of the three, not a blend — and up to three more from skilled work experience in New Zealand. A salary at twice the SMC wage threshold is worth four points, not six. The remaining two have to come from time on the ground in New Zealand, which means the fix for a points shortfall is elapsed time rather than a stronger file.

The wage thresholds do two separate jobs and are easy to conflate. The SMC wage threshold is currently NZD $35.00 an hour. Income at three times that — NZD $105.00 an hour — claims six points. Twice it claims four. One and a half times it claims three, which is the floor for claiming anything from income at all. Separately, the job itself has to clear a minimum pay test: an ANZSCO skill level 1 to 3 job must pay at least the SMC wage threshold, and a skill level 4 or 5 job must pay at least 1.5 times it. On the temporary side the equivalent line is NZD $67.12 an hour, twice the 2024 median wage, above which an AEWV applicant does not have to produce evidence of the minimum skill requirements at all.

The Green List is the only place the answer is fixed in advance. Everywhere else the outcome depends on evidence and on a decision. On the Green List it depends on whether your occupation is there, which tier it sits in, and whether you hold the qualification, registration or experience the listing specifies. Tier 1 is residence immediately. Tier 2 is residence after 24 months. The Skilled Migrant Category gives you an expression of interest and an invitation and a decision in between, and that is a materially different kind of risk.

Permanence is on a two-year clock, and it is separated from residence more cleanly than in most systems. Every resident visa in the table — straight to residence, work to residence, skilled migrant — becomes a Permanent Resident Visa once you have held it for two years in a row, and a Permanent Resident Visa lets you travel in and out of New Zealand indefinitely. The two-year mark is the real milestone, not the grant. A resident visa that you cannot leave and return on is not the end of the process, and treating it as the end is how people end up with a lapse they did not plan for.

The Skilled Migrant Category also sorts occupations twice over. Alongside the Green List it runs Amber and Red lists. A job on the Amber List carries additional requirements before you can use the pathway. A job on the Red List, or one at ANZSCO skill level 4 or 5, cannot use the Skilled Work Experience or Trades and Technician pathways at all. Two lists, two tests, and the same occupation can be the answer on one route and disqualifying on another.

Who this country suits

Professionals with an occupational registration

Occupational registration is one of the three ways to reach six points, and it is also the mechanism behind the health, teaching and trades roles that dominate the Green List. If your profession has a New Zealand registration board — nursing, medicine, teaching, accounting, plumbing, electrical work — you are standing in the part of the system built for you. Whether your registration is on the eligible list is a check you can make before spending anything, and it is worth making early, because registration also shortens the evidence you have to assemble for an AEWV.

People who already have an employer in the frame

The accreditation gate punishes cold applications and rewards organisations that hire internationally as a routine. If your employer has accredited before, knows what a job check involves, and can file one inside the 90-day window, most of the practical difficulty in this system belongs to them rather than to you. An employer doing this for the first time is a different proposition, and the difference is administrative, not legal.

Trades and technicians

A level 4 or 5 job still works here, on a shorter clock and with an English test attached. The AEWV runs three years at that skill level, and three years is enough to run a Work to Residence route or to build the New Zealand skilled work experience that the points pathway needs. The Trades and Technician pathway exists precisely for people who developed their skills through a qualification plus time on tools rather than through a degree.

Anyone whose occupation is on the Green List

If your role is listed at Tier 1, the outcome is close to deterministic. You need the job, the age, and the stated qualification, registration or experience — not a score, not a ranking against other applicants, not a draw to clear. That certainty has a cash value, because it removes the months of uncertainty that otherwise sit between arriving and knowing whether you can stay.

Who it does not suit

Founders and the self-employed should read the table twice. There is no self-petitioned residence route in New Zealand, and self-employment cannot be counted as relevant work experience under the Skilled Migrant Category. A business you own does not produce points, a job check or an accreditation. If the plan requires you to employ yourself on arrival, none of the routes above is the vehicle.

Nor is this system fast for anyone who needs to move in a few weeks. Visa processing is only the last step. Employer accreditation and a job check come first, a job check can only be filed within 90 days of the job advertisement closing, and it then lasts six months. Seven weeks for an AEWV is the number people quote; it is the number that applies after the employer's work is finished, not the number that describes the move.

People relying on a skill level 4 or 5 job as a long-term base should plan for the ceiling. Three years is the maximum you can spend on one or more Accredited Employer Work Visas at that level, and a further AEWV requires a period back outside New Zealand first. The work must also be paid at least the rate the role requires, so a job that dips below the threshold stops counting at the moment the pay does.

Finally, the qualification cut-off catches people who assume a diploma will serve. Under the Points-based pathway a non-degree qualification at level 7 or below claims nothing at all. A New Zealand master's degree is worth six points only if you completed at least 30 weeks of full-time study in the country and hold a bachelor's degree; without both, it is worth five. Anyone whose points plan rests on a qualification should price it against the tables before anything else.

How it compares to the alternatives

The comparison that matters is with the self-petitioned routes available elsewhere. In the United States a researcher or founder of sufficient standing can file a permanent case without an employer and without a job offer. New Zealand has no equivalent, and this is the trade it asks for in return: a shorter, more predictable clock and a lower bar on personal distinction. Six points, a job from an accredited employer, and residence that becomes permanent in two years is a considerably easier thing to achieve than sustained international acclaim — provided somebody will employ you.

Its points test is also much smaller than the grid systems it gets grouped with. Eligibility turns on holding six points, earned from a single category with at most three more for local experience, rather than on scoring across age, language, education and experience and then being ranked against everyone else in a pool. There is no periodic draw to clear and no cut-off that moves. You hold six points and the job, or you do not. That is less gameable, less optimisable, and it removes an entire industry of score-chasing that exists where the arithmetic rewards it.

Where the Green List is concerned, New Zealand is doing something most countries reserve for a small handful of roles. It grants residence before you move, on the strength of an occupation and a job offer, rather than tying permanent status to years served. Very few systems let a nurse or an engineer arrive already permanent. The flip side is that the list is short, it is a policy instrument that changes, and the entire benefit is contingent on your occupation appearing on it.

The honest counterweight is market size. Employer accreditation narrows the set of employers who can hire you at all, and the country is small. A talented person who needs deep capital markets, a specialist lab cluster or a large internal job market may find the routes easy and the country thin. The immigration system is not the constraint; the number of accredited employers worth working for is. That is a judgement about your field, not about the paperwork, and it is the one comparison no page can make for you.

Practical realities

Processing. An Accredited Employer Work Visa is decided within seven weeks for 80% of applications. A Straight to Residence Visa is decided within four months for 80% of applications. Both numbers start counting after the employer's accreditation and job check are complete, and those two steps sit entirely outside your control. Build the timeline from the advertisement, not from your application date.

Cost. The AEWV starts at NZD $1,540. The Skilled Migrant Category and Straight to Residence each start at NZD $6,450. The employer pays separately: a fee for accreditation, and a fee for each job check. Those employer fees are the reason a company that has never hired offshore will hesitate, and the reason one that has will not.

Age. Every residence route here requires you to be 55 or younger when you apply. This is not a preference that a strong file overrides. If you are close to the line, the order in which you file becomes the whole strategy.

Dependants. A Skilled Migrant Category application can include your partner and dependent children aged 24 or younger, and the resident visa lets you all live, work and study in New Zealand indefinitely. On the temporary side an AEWV holder can study for up to three months in any 12-month period, or do any study required as part of the employment. If your partner wants an independent career rather than a visa attached to yours, that has to be planned for, not assumed.

Path to permanence. Residence first, then a Permanent Resident Visa after two years in a row holding the residence visa. The Permanent Resident Visa is what lets you travel in and out of New Zealand indefinitely, and it is granted on the clock rather than on a further assessment of your career. Two years of holding the visa, correctly, is the whole requirement — and most of the risk in that period is administrative lapse rather than anything to do with the case that got you in.

Questions this raises

Sources

• Immigration New Zealand — Accredited Employer Work Visa
• Immigration New Zealand — Overview of AEWV employer accreditation and job check
• Immigration New Zealand — Skilled Migrant Category Resident Visa
• Immigration New Zealand — Straight to Residence Visa
• Immigration New Zealand — Work to Residence Visa
• Immigration New Zealand — Green List roles
• Immigration New Zealand — Accredited employer list