Family of refugees: Special visa categories
The Refugee Family Support residence category
Overview of the Refugee Family Support category
INZ Operational Manual: Residence, S4.10
If you’ve been accepted by Immigration New Zealand as a refugee and been granted citizenship or residence, the Refugee Family Support residence category allows you to sponsor some of your family for New Zealand residence. The purpose of this is to help with your resettlement by allowing you to sponsor family members who don’t qualify for residence under any of the other New Zealand residence categories. Under this category, you can normally only bring 1 family member, and that family member’s partner and dependent children.
The first step is for you, the former refugee in New Zealand, to apply to be selected as a sponsor under this scheme. If you’re selected, your family member can then apply for a Residence Visa within the next 12 months. The sponsored family member has to meet the usual health and character requirements (see: “Health, character, and money”).
Only 600 people are accepted under the Refugee Family Support category each year (and this includes any partners, children, or other family members that the sponsored person brings with them). In recent years, you’ve only been able to sponsor family members under the Refugee Family Support residence category if you come under “Tier 1” of this category, which means that you currently have no immediate family in New Zealand. Tier 2 is currently closed to new applications.
If you sponsor a family member under the Refugee Family Support category, you’ll have to make sure they have an adequate place to live for the next two years.
Who can be a sponsor, and who can be sponsored?
INZ Operational Manual: Residence, S4.10
At the moment, you can usually only make new applications to sponsor family members under the Refugee Family Support residence category if you come under “Tier 1” of this category, which means that you currently have no immediate family in New Zealand.
Tier 1 refugees are given first entry into the queue of 600 available places each year under the Refugee Family Support category, in the order that they register with Immigration New Zealand. Places for Tier 2 refugees (those who do have some immediate family in New Zealand) will only be open if the 600-person limit isn’t completely taken up by Tier 1 applications.
Who can sponsor their family under Tier 1?
If you’ve been accepted as a refugee in New Zealand, you can sponsor one family member for residence if you don’t have any immediate family here.
In general, “immediate family” means partners, parents, and dependent children. Depending on how old the child is, there are different rules about when Immigration New Zealand will see them as dependent:
- If they are under 18 years old, they just have to be single
- If they are older than 18 but younger than 21, then they need to be single and with no children
- If they are older than 21 but younger than 25, they need to be single, with no children, and are substantially or totally reliant on their parents for financial support.
For example, if you have a 22-year-old daughter living with you in New Zealand who is financially dependent on you, you still qualify to sponsor other family members for residence under Tier 1.
Which family members can you sponsor under Tier 1?
If you’re a Tier 1 refugee, you can sponsor your parents, adult brothers/sisters, adult children, grandparents, aunts/uncles, and nieces/nephews (plus that sponsored person’s partner and/or dependent children).
Who can sponsor their family under Tier 2?
Unlike Tier 1, you can sponsor family members for residence even if you have immediate family in New Zealand (including partners, parents, and non-dependent children aged 25 or over). But, to be a sponsor under Tier 2, you must also have been a New Zealand citizen or resident for at least three years, and you must have been in New Zealand for at least 184 days (roughly six months) in each of the last three years.
Which family members can you sponsor under Tier 2?
You can sponsor your parents, adult brothers/sisters, and adult children. You can sponsor a grandparent if they are your legal guardian: this means that before you turned 20 both your parents had died, and the grandparent had custody of you and the right to control your upbringing. You can’t sponsor your aunts/uncles or nieces/nephews. If you sponsor someone under Tier 2, you can also sponsor their partner and/or dependent children.
Tier 2 is currently closed to new applications, and Immigration New Zealand has approximately 1000 applications (totalling around 4000 people/places) that are slowly being added into each year’s quota depending on if there is space after Tier 1 applications have been added. This means Tier 2 will not be open to new applications for a long time.
Note: After Immigration New Zealand tells you they’ve registered you as a sponsor for your family, your family must apply for residence within the next 12 months. Their applications won’t be accepted if they’re made later than that.
