As a parent, if your children have already acquired citizenship of New Zealand, you may apply to live in New Zealand permanently with them. The Parent Resident Visa enables New Zealand residents and citizens to sponsor their parents for residence in New Zealand, to support skilled migration. The annual quota for New Zealand’s Parent Resident Visa is 2500 and the cost begins from NZD 3180. The application will be selected from either a queue or ballot pool depending on when it was received.

The Parent Resident Visa was restarted on 12 October 2022 with different requirements for sponsors and New Zealand started selecting expressions of interest (EOIs) again on 14 November 2022. The sponsors will need to earn 1.5 times the New Zealand median wage, and this limit will increase by half the median wage for each joint sponsor or additional parent. Two adult children, not just an adult child and their partner, can now jointly sponsor a parent, while other requirements for the Parent Resident Visa have not changed.

The visa is a 2-stage process. People first submit an Expression of Interest (EOI). If the EOI is selected and it meets the requirements, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) will issue an Invitation To Apply (ITA). Only people who have received an ITA can make a residence application and this application must be made within 4 months of the ITA being issued. In December 2023, in total 571 Parent Resident Visa applications were submitted while in January 2024, there were 455 cases submitted.

INZ can approve a maximum of 2000 visas per year to people who submitted EOIs before the restart of selections was announced on 10 October 2022. These EOIs are in a queue and selected in date order, with the oldest selected first.

A maximum of 500 visas a year can be granted to people who submitted EOIs on or after 10 October 2022. These EOIs are placed on a ballot and are selected randomly. EOIs in the ballot expire 2 years after they are submitted.

Once all the EOIs in the queue submitted before 10 October 2022 have been selected, the full amount of 2,500 visas will be available to people with EOIs on the ballot.

Alternatively, parents of New Zealand citizens and residents can apply for residence under the Parent Retirement Resident Visa. The applicants need to be able to invest specific amounts of money in New Zealand. Parents and grandparents can also apply for a Parent and Grandparent Visitor Visa. This is a 3-year visa that comes with multiple-entry travel conditions.