The Government unveiled new immigration settings this week, including a Green List of occupations to put some migrants on a fast track to residency but the policies have drawn fire from across Parliament.
The Green Party blasted the proposals as 'sexist and racist' for prioritising workers in historically male dominated industries and favouring higher wage workers.
Meanwhile, National's Immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford slammed the Government's ability to process the paperwork promptly, based on previous delays.
"The Labour Government promised that 80 percent of the 110,000 2021 Resident Visa applications received would be processed within 12 months. Six months have passed and INZ is only processing these at half the speed required to meet that target," Stanford said.
Speaking with Simon Shepherd on Newshub Nation, Faafoi said he was confident that there will be no visa bottleneck at Immigration New Zealand.
"I've asked for assurances that we'll be able to get the likes of working visas done within 20 working days. I've been given that assurance. I've asked for assurances that the likes of accredited employee work visas can get that within 30 working days."
Asked what happened if those assurances turned out to be false promises, Faafoi said he'd put his foot down.
"Well, I'll get grumpy and I'll ask the officials to make sure that they can put more resources and effort into it."
Watch the full interview.
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