New Zealand or Mumbai?

Immigration policy off the rails

The Government’s latest plan to open the door even wider to immigration is yet another step toward transforming New Zealand into something unrecognisable, a crowded and stressed-out replica of overseas megacities. With the announcement of the so-called “Parent Boost” visa, New Zealand is no longer just importing workers. We are now importing entire families. It’s time to ask who exactly this country is being run for.

Starting in September, migrants in New Zealand will be able to sponsor their parents to stay here for up to five years. The visa can be renewed once, meaning parents could remain in the country for a full decade on what is essentially a long-term visitor visa. This is a backdoor residency scheme, and a very generous one at that. As usual, it is being sold to us under the guise of economic growth and family reunification, two terms that now seem to mean more people, more strain, and more cultural dilution.

Christopher Luxon and Immigration Minister Erica Stanford have proudly announced this as a win for making New Zealand more competitive for skilled migrants. But the reality is we are not just attracting workers. We are signing ourselves up to support their extended families as well. Support with what, exactly? Infrastructure that is already stretched to breaking point? A healthcare system on life support? Skyrocketing rents? Overburdened roads and overcrowded schools?

Luxon says this will deliver economic and social benefits, but to whom? What about the working New Zealander who cannot get a GP appointment for three weeks? What about the taxpayer who is footing the bill for a bloated system that now has to cater to foreign nationals who have contributed nothing to this country?

Let’s be clear. This is about importing more people, not taking care of the ones already here. We have thousands of Kiwis living in motels, sleeping in cars, or waiting endlessly for surgery. How does this Government justify prioritising migrants’ parents, many of whom will never work or pay taxes here, over actual citizens in need?

Act’s Dr Parmjeet Parmar applauds the visa, noting it includes a requirement for private health insurance. But let’s be real. Private insurance doesn’t cover everything, and sooner or later, the public health system will be the fallback. Even if that doesn’t happen directly, it will happen indirectly through higher demand, longer queues, and increased costs that affect all of us.

Meanwhile, the Greens are crying foul, not because they oppose the visa, but because it isn’t open to everyone. According to them, the problem isn’t too many migrants. It is that not enough can bring their parents. They want us to throw open the gates and treat residency like a family reunion pass. Their immigration spokesman Ricardo Menéndez March says wealth should not be a prerequisite for bringing parents here. So who should pay, Ricardo? Kiwis who are already struggling?

Let’s call this what it is. Social engineering. A relentless campaign to reshape New Zealand demographically and culturally under the illusion of progress. With each new visa category, we inch closer to becoming the New Delhi of the South Pacific. Crowded, polluted, expensive, and fractured.

This is not about race. It is about numbers, sustainability, and national identity. We are importing the problems of other countries faster than we can build the infrastructure to handle them. The hospitals aren’t coping. The roads are clogged. The schools are full. And instead of looking after our own people, our elderly, our homeless, our struggling young families, we are making it easier for more foreign nationals to settle long-term.

Enough is enough.

We need a pause, not an expansion, of immigration. It is time to get serious about population sustainability, prioritising New Zealanders first, and ending this never-ending influx. The country is full, not just in terms of space, but in terms of capacity. We cannot keep solving our problems by importing people, and we certainly should not be importing problems along with them.

New Zealand should not be for sale or for rent to every family with the right passport and a sponsor. If you want to build a life here, great. But the taxpayer should not be subsidising your extended family reunion. We owe our loyalty to those born and raised here, and the ones who have genuinely made this country home, not to those just arriving with suitcases and entitlement.

The following content is for paid subscribers, which includes an article and video of NZ First’s Shane Jones saying that it’s time to rethink immigration before we lose what it means to be a Kiwi