Newshub has discovered critical medical workers are leaving New Zealand in droves due to anomalies in their visas - just as the Government invites others in to fill the gaps.
The National Party says hundreds are quitting these shores because they're simply on the wrong visa or can't wait while their residency applications are frozen - and we're losing more than we're gaining.
Family doctor Paul Jones and his anaesthetist wife Fleur Harding have been on the frontline of the battle against COVID since they arrived here 18 months ago.
But they're packing to return to Edinburgh with their three children. Sick of being stuck in visa limbo, they believe their residency application has been frozen.
"Around February we had to make a decision whether we were going to lose a good job in Scotland to continue the lottery of staying here or we take the certain thing and go back to the UK so we made the decision for our family to return," Dr Jones says.
The lack of New Zealand residency has hampered them in all sorts of ways.
"Without that, we don't have rights to buy a house, we don't have rights to health care, it's quite unstable for our young family," he says.
He knows several other essential healthcare workers in the same boat and assumes there are many more.
"I'm guessing it's running into hundreds if not thousands," Dr Jones says.
Back in September Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi opened the door to 165,000 skilled migrants.
But they had to be on a listed work visa of essential skills, work to residence or open work visa, not a working holiday, partnership or student visa.
That's why nurse Navneet Kaur missed out, she was on a student visa.
"It's exploitation," Kaur says. "I'm getting panic attacks. It's affecting our mental health now."
Kaur has been here seven years, but in September she was two months shy of qualifying as a registered nurse which would have got her over the line.
But now she's planning on taking her boy to Australia when she's over the COVID she says she caught at her workplace, a Tauranga rest home.
"Why me?" she says. "I'm skilled, I'm registered nurse, I spent more than $100,000 in New Zealand just to settle down here, just to secure my kids' future, I'm not eligible, like why?"
Newshub has learned of other similar stories and the National Party believes there are hundreds of healthcare workers caught in similar situations.
"I don't care what visa health care workers are on, we should give them all residence because we desperately need them," National Party Immigration Spokesperson Erica Stanford.
Many have already left, feeling they've been caught out by the arbitrary date set last September while those who arrive after them have been welcomed.
"I've been speaking to doctors and nurses who are upsticks and leaving New Zealand because they're watching other doctors and nurses arrive in New Zealand and get residence pretty much when they land and they've been waiting for years," Stanford says.
All this, as nurses and doctors remain in short supply just as COVID peaks.
