The lottery that decides which migrants get to bring their parents to New Zealand is being wound back, with most places from November going to the families who have been waiting longest.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford confirmed the final settings today. From 5 October the Parent Resident Visa moves to a hybrid model, and from 10 November selections will be made with 90 percent of expressions of interest drawn from a chronological queue and the remaining 10 percent still picked at random. The annual cap of 2,500 places does not change.
One more draw will be run under the existing rules, on Tuesday 11 August. After that the ballot stops being the main gate.
“I am really pleased to announce a change that will make a meaningful difference for families who have been advocating for a return to the certainty and stability provided by a chronological queue,” Stanford said.
She said the existing system had left people in limbo. “As Minister I have been contacted by many families highlighting the cruelty of an arbitrary ballot process for something as important as family reunification,” she said. “The current ballot system, implemented by the previous Labour Government, left families anxious and stressed with no certainty that their parents would ever be selected.”
The ballot was brought in for new expressions of interest lodged from October 2022, when the category reopened after being suspended in October 2016. When it came back the annual cap had been cut from 5,500 places to 2,500 and the income and sponsorship tests were tightened. A separate queue of older applications was worked through alongside the ballot, and by mid-2025 that queue was close to empty, which is why the balance of places had already shifted almost entirely to the draw.
Two administrative changes matter as much as the switch to a queue. Expressions of interest will no longer lapse after two years, so long as people confirm they still want to stay in the process and keep their details current. The fee that had to be paid every two years to resubmit is gone. “We are also removing the current requirement to reapply every two years and pay an additional fee,” Stanford said.
There is a trap in the transition. Anyone whose expression of interest expires before 5 October has to lodge a fresh one to stay in the running. Those expiring on or after that date carry over automatically. Where an expression of interest is resubmitted within 90 days of expiring, the original lodgement date is kept for the purposes of queue position, so families who have already been waiting years do not go to the back of the line on a technicality. People already in the pool are due to be told where they sit in the new queue during October.
The pool is large. Government figures put 7,931 valid expressions of interest on the books as at 5 August, covering 11,904 people. Set that against a cap of 2,500 visas a year and the arithmetic is unforgiving. Even if not another expression of interest were lodged, clearing the people already waiting would take the better part of five years, and new applications are still coming in. Stanford has not tried to argue otherwise. “The changes will not remove waiting times, but they will make the process fairer, clearer and more predictable,” she said.
What changes is the nature of the wait. Under a ballot, a family that missed out in 2022 had exactly the same odds in 2026 as someone who lodged the week before. Years of waiting bought nothing. Under a queue, waiting accrues. The 10 percent still allocated by lottery is the concession to people at the back, who would otherwise have no realistic prospect of selection for years. “There is no perfect way to allocate places when demand is higher than the number of visas available, but this approach strikes a fairer balance,” Stanford said.
Immigration New Zealand data shows the full 2,500 places were taken up in the 2025/26 financial year, and that more than 8,600 expressions of interest had been lodged in total by the end of June, representing close to 13,000 people. Demand has consistently outstripped supply since the category reopened.
Residence is not the only route. The Parent Boost visitor visa, which opened last year, lets eligible parents of citizens and residents stay for up to five years at a time and come and go freely, with the option of a second five-year visa. It carries insurance and income conditions and confers no residence rights. Uptake has been modest so far, with 708 applications received and 230 approved as at 2 February, alongside another 108 approved in principle pending proof of acceptable insurance.
For a policy area that usually generates argument, this one has drawn little. The pressure came largely from migrant families and immigration advisers who have spent four years describing the draw as arbitrary, and the fix asked for was simply that time served should count for something. “This Government knows that family reunification is too important to be left to random chance and we have delivered the change that is needed,” Stanford said.
Immigration settings will be argued over again before the general election, and the parties differ on how many residence places should be set aside for family reunification and on what the income tests should be. If you are working out where the parties stand, our voting tool lets you compare their positions.
The practical advice for anyone in the pool is short. Check the expiry date on your expression of interest, and if it falls before 5 October, lodge a new one before then.
Have you been waiting in the Parent Resident Visa pool, or sponsoring a parent who has? Tell us how long you have been in the queue in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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