The government is looking to recalibrate visa procedures to make sure genuine student applications from India are not rejected on legalese, says Erica Stanford.
In an exclusive interview with The Indian Weekender, the immigration minister pointed to the potential the Indian market holds for New Zealand’s education sector in the context of high rejection rates.
In the first four months this year, nearly 40 per cent of student visa applications from India were rejected. That’s in stark contrast to the 98 per cent approval rate for Chinese students in the same period.
“I have been watching that closely,” Erica says. “A key reason for rejections in the case of Indian students has been proof of finances. I want to make sure the process is simplified enough to offer genuine students a stronger chance at getting their applications approved.”
Erica didn’t say how soon the changes might be announced but suggested New Zealand wants to seize the moment as Australia and Canada tighten the screws on international student intakes.
“It’s a massive opportunity for us. Our international student intake is not yet close to pre-Covid levels and I intend to do everything possible to get it back to where it was,” Erica says.
The minister indicated her ongoing top priority is plugging holes in the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV), work that she says is consuming a chunk of immigration system’s bandwidth.
“As you can imagine, the system we inherited was a mess. I would have loved to pick up other stuff right away but the truth is fixing AEWV is taking most of our time. But I intend to get on to the student visa issues very soon.”
New Zealand universities have lately directly engaged with the government about the high student visa rejection rate of Indian applicants in 2024.
Most universities have done so through Universities New Zealand, an organisation representing and advocating for all eight of New Zealand's tertiary institutions.
"At the start of semester one this year, nearly 10 percent of visas to study at a New Zealand university were not yet allocated to an Immigration NZ official for processing, and another two percent were still being processed," Chris Whelan, chief executive of Universities New Zealand, said.
Whelan said 18 per cent of visas overall were still not confirmed at the start of the term in 2024.
"This meant uncertainty for students, and far too many had their studies impacted by late starts and, once they were able to start, having to deal with the double pressure of familiarising themselves with a new country while catching up on missed studies," he said.
Whelan said such uncertainties were unfair to students and detrimental to New Zealand's reputation as a world-class study destination.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, international education was the country's fifth-largest export market.
Between 1 January and 23 April, Immigration New Zealand processed 5,018 student visa applications from Indian students, with 2,010 rejections and 3,008 approvals.
Of the declined applications, 337 had offers from a New Zealand university, 678 from a New Zealand Te Pūkenga provider (polytechnic) and 992 from a private training establishment.
In the same four months, Immigration New Zealand processed 8012 student visa applications from Chinese students, with only 206 visa rejections.
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