Newshub's obtained a leaked document from Immigration New Zealand (INZ) telling its staff it's reassessing the risk factors for visitors.
The instructions were issued to help the department clear an unprecedented volume of applications.
The National Party says New Zealand's border is now at risk, but the minister and INZ say they're confident it's not.
New Zealand is opening our border after two long COVID years. And turns out there are a lot of people eager to visit New Zealand, catching INZ off-guard.
"We had to pivot from a standing start when we think about visitor visas. We got three times the influx we were expecting from visitor visas," said Richard Owen, general manager of INZ's verification and compliance branch.
By November 22, almost 573,000 people from countries that don't need visitor visas had got the green light to come.
There's also been about 135,000 foreigners needing visas to visit, but there were still 40,000 visitor visas yet to be processed.
Newshub's obtained a leaked document showing how INZ will speed through the backlog.
It is reassessing factors that flag applications as high-risk and require manual processing.
The advice says specified high-risk applications will involve a quick scan of documents.
"All of the core assessments in there in terms of people's health, their character, checking for criminal convictions. There's still a rigorous test around them," Immigration Minister Michael Wood said.
"From my perspective, concerning if that information's been leaked to you. But the way we look at it is 'this is normal' - we review our settings and our rules regularly," Owen said.
Newshub's spoken to an INZ insider and they say this isn't normal. They say this is putting the integrity of our border at risk and could lead to more people overstaying, meaning they're vulnerable to exploitation.
"This most certainly will allow people into New Zealand who would have been filtered out through the integrity of our border system," National's immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford said.
"If I had any concern that the integrity of the system was being put at risk, I would direct Immigration NZ not to make those changes. That is my number one function as Immigration Minister, to make sure we have integrity in the system," Wood said.
A system which some say should have been better prepared and not surprised so many people wanted to visit New Zealand.
