Associate Immigration Minister Casey Costello at World Refugee Day celebrations at Parliament.
ROBERT KITCHIN / THE POST
New Zealand has reached its refugee quota for the second year in a row, with 1514 people arriving for the 2023/24 year.
Cabinet has also signed off on an additional 51 people through the Community Refugee Sponsorship (CORS) programme for the next financial year.
The CORS programme was a three-year trial that sees the Government work with community organisations to sponsor and resettle refugees.
The trial was originally for three years until June this year, after being piloted in 2018, with 50 people sponsored each year to come to New Zealand. It is in addition to the refugee quota.
There were 151 people who arrived in New Zealand over the trial period, but an extra 51 people were in the pipeline as at June 30.
Associate Immigration Minister Casey Costello said she did not want the additional 51 people to have the pathway declined, “so I went to Cabinet and asked for approval to extend it by another 50 people”.
“Between now and June 2025 we'll try and get all of those people here. They've all been approved in place, but it just takes a bit of time to get them here and get them through the process.
“But it means now we're not declining anybody who had previously been given an indication that they had been accepted.”
Costello said there were “millions and millions of people are just in this terrible position that most of us couldn't even imagine”.
“It's [the sponsorship programme] a good way from my perspective for community engagement... It can be an individual supporting someone through a business and employment or it can be a church group, it can be arranged assignments, but it means there's a wraparound support straight away.”
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