The Green List, Accredited Employer Work Visa and sector agreements
Yesterday's announcement of the New Zealand border fully reopening on 31 July is welcome news, and there was a lot to unpack about the immigration reset.
Thank you to our members who contributed to our surveys last year to help us understand the pain points so we could advocate effectively on this.
The Green List
Many of you will be looking closely at the Green List which will make it easier for employers to hire and attract migrants for highly skilled, hard-to-fill occupations, with guaranteed residence pathways for eligible people.
Roles in construction and engineering feature heavily on the list, including:
- Construction project manager
- Project builder
- Surveyor
- Civil engineer
- Structural engineer
- Environmental Engineer
- Geotechnical Engineer
- And many more
Accredited Employer Work Visa
We also learned more detail about the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV), a new temporary work visa being introduced on 4 July. You must be accredited to hire migrant workers on an AEWV.
There are three steps – accreditation, the job check, and the application. You can apply for accreditation from 23 May and for a job check from 20 June.
Read more about the Accredited Employer Work Visa
Sector agreements
A sector agreement will be put in place later this year for construction and infrastructure, which will provide limited exceptions to the median wage requirement, however temporary lower wage thresholds will be in place from July.
The construction and infrastructure sector was selected to ensure New Zealand’s key infrastructure projects and work to increase housing stock can continue.
Read more about sector agreements