by Ryan Henderson

136,200 migrants arrived in New Zealand in the year to February 2026 (Stats NZ). ACT's response, announced on Sunday: a six-point immigration policy. Five of those points describe things the New Zealand government already does in some form. The sixth is a daily surcharge on migrants that adds up to about $11,000 upfront on a five-year visa, $22,000 if they bring a partner. David Seymour says people who reduce political debate to a “soap opera” should look at the substance. Fair enough. This article does that, point by point.

SIX THINGS TO KNOW

ACT's six policy headlines are in bold; what each one actually does follows.

“Deport serious offenders“: under existing law, residents convicted of a serious crime can be deported, but only if the crime falls within their first 10 years in New Zealand. National's Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill (sponsored by Erica Stanford and already before Parliament) extends that window to 20 years. ACT MP Parmjeet Parmar has been pushing inside that bill process for the window to be removed entirely, telling media: “Why should consequences expire after 10 years or 20 years if somebody is on a residence class visa?” ACT's “no time limit” policy on Sunday is a re-announcement of an amendment ACT was already moving through legislation it supports.

“Skilled visas for skilled jobs“: in principle, requiring each occupation on the visa list to justify itself each year is fine policy. The catch: ACT itself removed the strongest demand check the system had just 14 months ago. Employers used to have to pay migrants at or above the national median wage. The 17 December 2024 Beehive release announcing the removal said it was happening “as set out in the coalition agreement with ACT.” This policy is worth doing but ACT has not helped the problem of low-skilled migrants by dismantling a wage check and proposing to re-engineer a replacement for the next election 14 months later.

“Opportunity, not dependency“: worth doing. Extending the welfare stand-down for new residents from 2 years to 5 years is a real change. New residents are already barred from Jobseeker Support, Sole Parent Support and Supported Living Payment for their first 2 years; Accommodation Supplement is already off the table until they reach permanent residency. ACT's policy extends the stand-down to 5 years and broadens it across all income-tested benefits. A positive extension of an existing rule. Not groundbreaking.

“Enforce the rules“: of the 20,980 overstayers ACT cites, 74% arrived on visitor visas. Only about 2,200 came in on work visas. ACT's policy is built around the AEWV (the work-visa system), which means roughly nine out of ten of the overstayers ACT itself named aren't reached by the proposed mechanisms. INZ's existing Investigations and Compliance teams already do this work, handling 5,477 complaints in the year to 30 June 2025. On stage, a dedicated enforcement unit makes for a strong press release, but it's not enough. As policy, it duplicates an existing INZ function and reaches just one in ten of the people ACT named as the problem.

“Stronger English language requirements“: “stronger” is doing a lot of work in that headline. ACT's policy extends the existing AEWV English requirement to upper-tier roles. It does not raise the level required, which is IELTS overall 4: elementary user, survival English (“clean this table,” “serve the customer,” “wear the helmet”). Not enough to follow technical safety briefings, handle customer complaints, or hold detailed workplace conversations. By international standards, that bar sits at the bottom end. Australia's Skills in Demand (subclass 482) visa requires IELTS 5 in each band. Canada's Express Entry (Federal Skilled Worker) requires CLB 7, equivalent to IELTS 6 in each band. NZ's IELTS 4 is the lowest in the Five Eyes for skilled work entry. The roles where strong English actually matters most (registered nurses, doctors, teachers, engineers) already require IELTS 7 through their professional registration bodies, far above the AEWV bar. If voters perceive migrants not speaking English well at work, the issue is that the existing IELTS bar is set at survival level. ACT's policy spreads that bar to higher skilled roles. It does not lift it.

“A fair contribution for infrastructure“: there is a credible argument for it. A $6 a day surcharge that adds about $11,000 upfront to a five-year visa, $22,000 for a couple, would filter the pool toward higher-paid migrants whose employers can absorb the cost, and price out the lower-paid roles ACT itself flags as a problem. On its own, that is the policy lever closest to doing what ACT says the system needs. The complication: ACT signed a free trade agreement with India on 27 April 2026, eight days before this policy was announced. Article 8C.4(6) of that agreement constrains visa fees on Indian nationals to “reasonable” levels that “do not unduly impair or delay trade in services.” Erica Stanford's own description of the surcharge to RNZ was that the answer to “who's going to come” would be “nobody”. A fee the relevant minister concedes would mean nobody comes is, on its face, the kind of fee that clause is designed to test. ACT supports the FTA. ACT's surcharge may breach it and face a Chapter 19 challenge. ACT signed away the lever, then reached for it.

What ACT used to say about immigration

In April 2017, when the Key government tightened visa rules ahead of the election, David Seymour was the loudest voice in Parliament against it. From the NZ Herald, 21 April 2017:

“By attempting to get tough on immigration, National has sparked a populist bidding war in which facts are completely ignored.”

His worry then was the damage to industries depending on migrant labour. Same piece:

“Even if it were possible, it would do enormous damage to key industries. Tourism, aged care, and crucially during a housing shortage, construction are all screaming out for new workers.“

In November 2022, ACT released “Real Change in Immigration” as a formal policy document. RNZ, 24 November 2022:

“New Zealand's labour market is far too small to build world-beating companies without easy access to offshore skills.“

The 2022 manifesto framed the existing visa bureaucracy as the problem and proposed replacing it with a price signal:

“The advantage of a price system is that employers can assess whether it's worth paying the fee or hiring locally, instead of the bureaucracy trying to decide which employers ‘deserve' workers.“

Seymour has an answer for the contradiction. He told RNZ this week that successive governments have let immigration become “a general-purpose labour tap” and that the rate of settlement has overwhelmed the country's ability to provide infrastructure. The data agrees with the diagnosis. Net migration was 25,200 in the year to February 2026, up from 17,700 a year earlier (Stats NZ), and rising. Net always understates the gross flow: 136,200 migrant arrivals in the year to February 2026, against 111,100 departures. The headline net figure is small only because tens of thousands of New Zealanders are leaving for Australia each year, hiding well over 100,000 actual migrant arrivals behind a low net number. Of Sunday's six points, the surcharge is the only one that would touch that volume.

Marcus Beveridge, an immigration lawyer at Queen City Law, told Newstalk ZB on Monday: “most of it's already here, it's superfluous, it's posturing.“

ACT has had 18 months in coalition on immigration. The two coalition wins ACT secured (removing the median wage check and scrapping sector agreements) both made the AEWV system more permissive, not less. Net migration is back up to 25,200 and rising. Gross migrant arrivals are running at 136,200 a year. Three quarters of the 20,980 overstayers Seymour invokes came in on visitor visas the new policy does not touch. The infrastructure deficit is real. The frustration with a skilled-migration system that approved more fast food workers than biomedical engineers (ACT's own figures) is real. The six-point plan released Sunday is mostly policy already in place, re-announced for an election year. It does not reach those problems in any serious way. The one mechanism that might have, the surcharge, may breach the FTA ACT signed eight days earlier and face a Chapter 19 challenge. ACT signed away the lever, then reached for it.

Phil Tywford called the new policy a “bidding war” between ACT and NZ First. The phrase Seymour himself used in 2017, against National.

What policies ACT should have come out with is not for this article to say. But it is clear by the lack of policy work, that this is not the platform of a party that believes in controlled migration.

Originally posted by Ryan Henderson on X.

SOURCES

ACT and policy coverage: