Investors will only have to remain in New Zealand for 21 days over three years to gain residency under changes to the so-called ‘golden visa’ to attract wealthy investors to New Zealand, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford says.
From 1 April, the Active Investor Plus visa will be replaced with two, simplified investment categories.
The first, the ‘Growth’ category, will focus on higher-risk investments, including direct investments in New Zealand businesses.
It will require a minimum investment of $5 million for a minimum period of three years.
The second, the ‘Balanced’ category, will focus on mixed investments, with the ability to choose ones that are lower risk.
There will be a minimum investment of $10 million over five years.
I actually think they should. At some point, it’s very likely some circumstance arises where you should have discretion. In fact it seems this clause was used to grant citizenship 28 times last year. Should that discretion be “I want to buy citizenship”? Probably not, but I get the idea of such a clause, and there are probably too many to rely on private bills to handle them (maybe the criteria should be a little looser then use private bills for the others?).
I don’t know the answer to this but I do wonder what the downsides are of a single person having citizenship when they probably shouldn’t. Is this more of a perception thing than actual harm, or does shaving citizenship allow political donations that otherwise couldn’t be made?
Wait, is that the purpose of this new stance of letting people buy their way into residency, that this specifically targets people who are likely to be National/Act donors?
If a single person is making or overriding a decision than the next minister should be able to revoke it.
This way people like Theil will have to continue to bribe all parties in government every few years instead of bribing just once.
I mean, they do apparently have this power. Seems they revoke citizenship from time to time.