Labour is promising to make it easier and cheaper for Pacific families to reconnect across the ocean, announcing it will expand visa-waiver travel to citizens of Pacific Islands Forum nations if elected.
The election policy would reduce one of the long-running barriers confronting Pacific whānau wanting to visit family in Aotearoa, particularly for weddings, funerals and other significant family and cultural occasions.
Labour Deputy Leader and Pacific Peoples spokesperson Carmel Sepuloni says the existing system can leave New Zealand-based families carrying visa costs and sponsorship responsibilities simply to bring relatives into the country for a visit.
Labour says extending visa-waiver access would recognise the deep whakapapa, cultural, economic and family connections between Aotearoa and the wider Pacific.
PACIFIC FAMILIES AT THE CENTRE
The proposal is significant because New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific is unlike its relationship with most other parts of the world.
Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders have whakapapa and family connections throughout Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau and the wider Pacific.
Yet citizens of several Pacific countries still face visa requirements when travelling to New Zealand, creating a situation where people from countries much further away can have easier short-term access.
Sepuloni says cost-of-living pressures have made those barriers even harder for families to absorb.
Labour says visa costs and processing requirements can contribute to relatives missing major whānau events, including tangihanga and funerals.
Under its proposal, visa-waiver access would be expanded to citizens of Pacific Islands Forum nations, making short-term travel to New Zealand easier and more affordable.
A LONG-RUNNING IMMIGRATION DEBATE
Pacific visa access has been debated for years.
Campaigners have questioned why some Pacific citizens must continue applying for visitor visas when nationals from many other countries can travel to New Zealand under visa-waiver arrangements.
The issue has also been raised through Parliament’s petitions process.
Immigration New Zealand has previously pointed to factors including overstay risk, national security and biosecurity when defending existing settings.
Recent immigration debate has highlighted the complexity of those figures. Reporting this month showed Tonga and Samoa have had comparatively high overstay rates as a proportion of temporary arrivals, while some much larger visa-waiver countries produce greater absolute numbers of overstayers but at significantly lower rates relative to total arrivals.
That leaves policymakers confronting a genuine balancing act between immigration compliance and New Zealand’s unique relationship with its Pacific neighbours.
ELECTION BATTLE OVER THE PACIFIC
The announcement also puts Pacific immigration firmly into the Election 2026 campaign.
Labour has already released a broader immigration platform proposing a Government Policy Statement to align migration with workforce, housing and infrastructure capacity.
Its wider plan includes extending the period migrants generally need to live in New Zealand before becoming eligible for permanent residence from two years to four, improving protections against migrant exploitation and reviewing parent visa, health and English-language requirements.
New Zealand First has also moved on Pacific immigration.
The party recently announced it would offer Pacific overstayers a two-year period to apply to regularise their immigration status, while proposing much tighter immigration and citizenship settings in other areas.
That means Pacific communities are being presented with distinctly different immigration proposals as parties compete for support ahead of the November 7 election.
MORE THAN TOURISM
For Pacific families, however, the visa-waiver debate is about much more than tourism.
The Pacific is connected by families who increasingly live across borders.
A single extended family might have relatives living in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Apia, Nuku’alofa, Suva and Sydney.
When a parent becomes sick, somebody gets married, a baby is born or a loved one dies, immigration rules can suddenly become intensely personal.
For Māori, there is also a familiar dimension to the debate.
Māori and Pacific peoples share deep ancestral relationships across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, while the modern movement of people throughout the Pacific continues a story of connection that existed long before contemporary borders and immigration systems.
THE DETAIL WILL MATTER
The announcement establishes Labour’s direction, but the practical design of any expanded waiver regime will be important.
Visa-waiver travel does not necessarily mean unrestricted entry or residence.
New Zealand’s existing visa-waiver system generally allows eligible travellers to seek short-term entry without first obtaining a conventional visitor visa, while border, character and other immigration requirements continue to apply.
Any future Labour government would therefore need to spell out which countries and passport holders qualify, the permitted length of stay, whether travellers would require an NZeTA, and what safeguards would apply around overstaying and other immigration risks.
Those details will determine how substantial the change ultimately is.
But politically, Labour’s message is already clear.
It wants New Zealand’s immigration system to treat the Pacific relationship differently — and make crossing the ocean to reconnect with whānau easier.
As immigration becomes another dividing line of Election 2026, the debate now turns to whether New Zealand’s closest Pacific neighbours should also be among those with the easiest access to our shores.
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