New Zealand Migration Law for People Living with HIV or Viral Hepatitis
For the past few years, migration law has attracted increasing attention in the field of blood-borne virus advocacy. According to the World Health Organisation, about 1 in 8 of the global population is a migrant, and evidence shows that HIV is more prevalent among migrant populations than those residing in their country of birth.
In Australia, the prevalence of hepatitis B is tightly linked to international migration. HIV-related travel and visa restrictions are commonplace around the world – with the most recent data showing that 48 countries, territories and areas impose HIV-related restrictions.
Australia has not been immune to the global trend of HIV-related travel restrictions. Until relatively recently, people living with HIV who wished to migrate to Australia faced significant barriers to entrance. These barriers were reduced in July 2019, but only for those applying for temporary visas of up to three months. For longer-term visas, people living with HIV must still meet a set of health criteria, in a process that includes an assessment of the expected cost of their healthcare needs to the Australian community.
Meanwhile, the prevalence of hepatitis B in Australia continues to be tightly linked to international migration. In 2019, around 44% of all newly reported cases of hepatitis B in Australia were among people born overseas, with most cases originating in countries with high prevalence rates. Addressing these barriers and other legal issues affecting people living with blood-borne viruses who wish to migrate to Australia is therefore critical to achieving health equity and justice in this country. The Health+Law project is working to identify and eliminate these legal barriers.
In this context, recent changes to HIV-related migration law in New Zealand have been cause for celebration. In late 2021, UNAIDS welcomed the news that New Zealand had ‘removed all travel restrictions for people living with HIV’, while New Zealand’s LGBTQ+ magazine express wrote that ‘New Zealand will now join a list of 203 countries that no longer impose HIV related restrictions on entry, stay and residency.’ However, while the news was widely interpreted to mean that PLHIV might now be able to freely migrate to NZ, avoiding the sorts of health criteria which Australia imposes on visa applicants, this is not entirely accurate. The change in New Zealand, whilst significant, in fact brings them more into alignment with the Australian approach – and their migration system remains far more restrictive than Australia’s for both PLHIV and, particularly, for people living with viral hepatitis.
New Zealand migration law has an acceptable standard of health test (known as the ‘ASH test’) which is very similar to the health criteria used in Australia. The recent reform removed HIV from the list of conditions deemed to automatically fail the ASH test due to associated healthcare costs. Australia does not maintain a list of conditions that will breach our health requirement, instead assessing each applicant individually – New Zealand now does the same.
New Zealand has also recently significantly increased the cost threshold for their ASH test from NZ$41,000 to NZ$81,000. However, because HIV is a chronic condition, this cost is measured over an applicant’s lifetime – in contrast with Australia’s approach, where the cost threshold is $51,000 over a maximum of ten years.
For this reason, as we understand it, most PLHIV attempting to migrate to New Zealand will now:
Apply for a residency visa (as it is called there)
Breach the ASH test for lifetime costs of over NZ$81,000
Seek a waiver (as we do here)
This is certainly an enormous improvement from the previous law, where PLHIV were deemed to automatically breach the ASH test by virtue of the condition itself – but there is still a long way to go.
However, for those living with hepatitis B, the situation remains as restrictive as ever. Hepatitis B remains on the list of conditions that automatically fail the ASH test in New Zealand. It is unlikely that a person living with Hepatitis B seeking to migrate to Australia would breach the health criteria in Australia, but in New Zealand there remains a blanket ban on migration for those living with Hepatitis B.
Further reading
Positive Migration Guide: supporting people living with HIV to migrate to Australia | University of Technology Sydney (uts.edu.au)’