The Straight to Residence Visa, Explained
The Straight to Residence Visa grants New Zealand residence to people holding a job offer, or current employment, in one of the 164 Tier 1 Green List occupations with an accredited employer. No prior New Zealand work is required, which is what separates it from every other skilled residence route. It costs from NZ$6,450 and 80% are decided within three months.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail (as at August 2026) |
|---|---|
| Who it is for | People with a job offer or current job in a Tier 1 Green List occupation |
| Occupations covered | 164 — Tier 1 of Appendix 13, effective 23 March 2026 |
| Prior New Zealand work | None required |
| Can you apply from offshore? | Yes |
| Employer | Must be accredited by Immigration New Zealand |
| Job terms | Permanent, fixed-term of 12 months or more, or a contract for services of 6 months or more |
| Pay | At least NZ$35.00 an hour, or the rate Appendix 13 sets for that occupation |
| Age | 55 or younger |
| Family | Partner and dependent children aged 24 or younger may be included |
| Cost | From NZ$6,450 — NZ$2,880 fee + NZ$3,570 immigration levy |
| Processing | Average 7 weeks; 80% within 3 months |
| Arrival deadline | Must enter New Zealand within 12 months of the visa being granted |
| What it grants | Indefinite right to live, work and study in New Zealand |
| Onward | Permanent Resident Visa available after 2 years |
Primary sources: Straight to Residence Visa — INZ and Appendix 13 — Green List. Both read on 20 August 2026.
The one feature that defines this visa
No prior New Zealand work is required.
That single sentence is the reason this visa exists and the reason it is worth understanding precisely. Almost every other skilled residence route into New Zealand asks for time already served in the country. The Skilled Migrant Category usually needs New Zealand skilled work experience to close the gap to six points. The Work to Residence Visa needs 24 months. The Care Workforce and Transport pathways need 24 months.
The Straight to Residence Visa needs none. A qualifying job offer is enough to apply, and the application can be made from anywhere in the world.
Everything else about the visa follows from that. Because it skips the New Zealand work test, the entry criteria at the front are tighter: the occupation must be on Tier 1 rather than Tier 2, and Tier 1 is a narrower and more heavily credentialled list.
Who it covers
Tier 1 holds 164 occupations, and it is not evenly spread:
| Sector | Occupations | Share of Tier 1 |
|---|---|---|
| Health and Social Services | 120 | 73% |
| Engineering | 23 | 14% |
| ICT, Electronics and Telecommunications | 12 | 7% |
| Construction | 4 | 2% |
| Other (Primary Industries, Science) | 3 | 2% |
| Business Professionals | 2 | 1% |
Nearly three quarters of the list is health, social services and registered teaching: medical practitioners across 34 specialist occupations, 15 nursing occupations, all 18 dental occupations, midwives, pharmacists, physiotherapists, psychologists, social workers, counsellors, radiographers, sonographers, and primary, intermediate and secondary school teachers.
The other blocks are small. Engineering has 23 entries. ICT has 12, all with high pay thresholds. Construction has four: Construction Project Manager, Project Builder, Quantity Surveyor and Surveyor. Business Professionals has exactly two — External Auditor and Internal Auditor.
That shape is worth knowing before you invest time. If your occupation is not in one of those blocks, the honest first check is whether it is on Tier 2 instead, and if not, whether the Skilled Migrant Category is the relevant instruction.
What the job has to look like
The occupation being on Tier 1 is necessary but not sufficient. The employment itself must meet four tests.
Accredited employer. The employer must hold accreditation from Immigration New Zealand. Accreditation is a status a business applies for and can lose; it is not a permanent attribute. See employer accreditation explained.
Job terms. The position must be one of:
- permanent, or
- fixed-term for 12 months or more, or
- a contract for services of 6 months or more.
The contract-for-services option is specific to this visa. It does not exist for the Work to Residence Visa.
Pay. At least NZ$35.00 an hour — the immigration median wage from 9 March 2026 — unless Appendix 13 specifies a different rate for the occupation, in which case that rate applies instead. Several Tier 1 occupations do carry their own rate:
| Occupation | Required rate |
|---|---|
| External Auditor (221213), Internal Auditor (221214) | NZ$45.50/hr (stated as NZ$94,640 a year on a 40-hour week) |
| Chief Information Officer, ICT Project Manager, ICT Managers nec, Analyst Programmer, Developer Programmer, Software Engineer, Software Tester, ICT Security Specialist, Software and Applications Programmers nec | NZ$72.80/hr |
| Database Administrator (262111), Systems Administrator (262113) | NZ$70.00/hr (NZ$145,600 a year on a 40-hour week) |
| Multimedia Specialist (261211) | NZ$57.75/hr |
Where the employment is a contract for services rather than an employment agreement, several of those ICT occupations carry a higher rate and a minimum of ten years' work in a relevant role. Full detail is in Green List pay thresholds.
Genuine employment. The job must be real and must not have been obtained by payment. Paying for a job offer is an offence in New Zealand.
The occupation-specific requirement
Each Tier 1 entry attaches a requirement to the occupation itself, separate from the job. There are three kinds.
Mandatory registration. Most of the health block requires registration with a named New Zealand body — the Medical Council, Nursing Council, Dental Council, Midwifery Council, Pharmacy Council, Psychologists Board, Social Workers Registration Board, Teaching Council and others. Where Appendix 13 says registration is required, nothing else substitutes for it. For medical practitioners, Appendix 13 accepts provisional general, general, provisional vocational, vocational or special purpose locum tenens registration — and it accepts a letter of eligibility for one of those, which matters for people applying before they have arrived.
A named qualification. Qualifications are expressed against the NZQCF. An overseas qualification must be comparable to the standard of the New Zealand qualification named, and unless it is on INZ's exempt list an NZQA International Qualification Assessment is required.
A pay threshold. For the auditors and the 12 ICT occupations, the rate in the table above is the requirement — there is no qualification or registration test attached.
Engineers: registration is optional, not mandatory
For all 23 engineering occupations, plus Construction Project Manager, Quantity Surveyor and Surveyor, the Appendix 13 entry is a list of alternatives. A Chemical Engineer, for example, satisfies the entry with any one of:
- a Washington Accord accredited undergraduate engineering degree, awarded on or after the date that country became a signatory and appearing on that signatory's accredited-programme list,
- a Bachelor of Engineering with Honours at NZQCF Level 8,
- a Level 7 or higher qualification plus a letter from Engineering New Zealand certifying the degree meets the benchmark toward Chartered Professional Engineer status, or
- New Zealand registration as a Chartered Professional Engineer.
A letter, certificate or registration from IPENZ — the name Engineering New Zealand used before October 2017 — satisfies a requirement for one from Engineering New Zealand.
An engineer with an accredited degree may never register with anybody and still meet the instruction. Guides that present chartered status as compulsory are wrong on this point.
Age, English, health and character
- Age 55 or younger at the date of application. This is a hard limit.
- English. The applicant must be able to speak and understand English.
- Health. A medical examination and, in most cases, a chest x-ray. The standard applied is the "acceptable standard of health".
- Character. Police certificates from the country of citizenship and any country lived in for 12 months or more in the past ten years, for everyone aged 17 and over.
Family
A partner and dependent children aged 24 or younger may be included in the same application. Included children must be single and financially dependent. Children aged 21 to 24 face a dependency test that looks at employment status and capacity for self-support.
Adding family members changes the fee. Immigration New Zealand's published figure is a "from" price for the application, and the cost of New Zealand residence sets out what varies.
Step 1: Confirm the occupation is on Tier 1
Find the ANZSCO code that matches the duties of the job, then check it against the Tier 1 table in Appendix 13. Job titles are not decisive; codes are. If the code appears only in Tier 2, this is not the right visa — see the Work to Residence Visa.
Step 2: Confirm the employer's accreditation
Check the employer against Immigration New Zealand's published list of accredited employers before anything else. An offer from a business that is not accredited does not support this application.
Step 3: Satisfy the occupation requirement
If registration is mandatory, begin it early — registration with a New Zealand professional body is frequently the longest single step in the whole process, and it runs on the body's timetable rather than INZ's. If the requirement is a qualification, order the NZQA assessment. If it is a pay rate, get the rate written into the employment agreement.
Step 4: Gather health, character and identity evidence
Medical examination, chest x-ray where required, police certificates less than six months old, and evidence of English. Applications lodged without an upfront police certificate may be declined without further contact, so this is not a document to leave until later.
Step 5: Apply online and wait
The application is made online through an Immigration Online account. Average processing is 7 weeks and 80% of applications are decided within 3 months. There is no way to buy a faster decision — paid priority processing does not exist for any New Zealand visa.
Step 6: Arrive within 12 months
The visa carries a condition that the holder must enter New Zealand within 12 months of it being granted. Miss that and the visa can lapse.
After the visa is granted
The Straight to Residence Visa is a Resident Visa, not a Permanent Resident Visa. It grants an indefinite right to live, work and study in New Zealand, but its travel conditions expire — typically two years from first arrival. Travel conditions govern re-entry, not the right to remain.
After two years as a resident, and once the commitment requirements are met, a Permanent Resident Visa can be applied for. That visa has no travel expiry. It costs NZ$315 and is processed quickly — an average of 1.5 weeks, with 80% decided within 2 weeks.
The distinction trips up a lot of people. Resident Visa vs Permanent Resident Visa explains it, and resident visa travel conditions covers what happens if they expire while you are overseas.
Citizenship is a separate process, administered by the Department of Internal Affairs rather than Immigration New Zealand. See from residence to citizenship.
What changes on 24 August 2026
On 24 August 2026 Immigration New Zealand changes how required wage rates are calculated for work-to-residence visas, and restructures the Skilled Migrant Category into three pathways.
The wage-calculation change principally affects visas with a qualifying-experience period — Work to Residence, Transport Work to Residence and Care Workforce Work to Residence — because those are the ones where a rate can rise part-way through the clock. The Straight to Residence Visa has no such clock: the pay test is applied to the job being offered at the time of application.
Even so, this page was verified on 20 August 2026, four days before the change. Confirm the current rate and rules on Immigration New Zealand's site before you apply.
Where the line sits on advice
This page describes what the published instructions require. It does not assess whether any particular person meets them, because under the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007 that is licensed work — and the Act applies whether or not the person giving the advice is paid.
If the question is whether your specific qualification is comparable, whether your duties match a particular ANZSCO code, or how a health or character issue will be treated, speak to a licensed immigration adviser or a New Zealand lawyer. Licences can be checked on the Immigration Advisers Authority register — see how to find a licensed immigration adviser.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does the Straight to Residence Visa take?
Immigration New Zealand's published wait times as at August 2026 give an average of 7 weeks, with 80% decided within 3 months. Those figures describe applications already completed and are not a commitment for any individual file.
Can I apply for the Straight to Residence Visa from outside New Zealand?
Yes. No prior New Zealand work is required, so the application can be made offshore on the strength of a qualifying job offer from an accredited employer. If it is granted, you must arrive in New Zealand within 12 months.
What is the age limit for the Straight to Residence Visa?
55 or younger at the date of application.
How much does it cost?
From NZ$6,450 — a NZ$2,880 application fee plus a NZ$3,570 immigration levy. There has been no general fee or levy increase in 2025 or 2026; INZ's fee page still describes its rates as current as of 1 October 2024.
Do I need a job offer, or can I already be working?
Either. The instruction covers both a job offer and current employment in a Tier 1 occupation with an accredited employer.
Can my partner and children come with me?
A partner and dependent children aged 24 or younger can be included in the application. Children must be single and financially dependent, and those aged 21 to 24 are assessed against a dependency test.
Does the Straight to Residence Visa give permanent residence?
Not immediately. It grants a Resident Visa with travel conditions. A Permanent Resident Visa, which has no travel expiry, can be applied for after two years.
What happens if my job ends after I get residence?
Residence is not tied to the employer. Once a Resident Visa is granted it carries an indefinite right to live, work and study in New Zealand, and it is not conditional on staying in the job. Losing the job before the visa is granted is a different situation entirely, because the offer is what supports the application.
Is Straight to Residence better than the Skilled Migrant Category?
They are different instructions, not ranked options, and which one a person can use depends on their occupation and credentials rather than preference. Straight to Residence is faster on average — 7 weeks against 10 — but it is only open to the 164 Tier 1 occupations. See Green List vs Skilled Migrant Category.
