Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse says concerns parents of migrants were not meeting commitments to financially support themselves had prompted the decision to temporarily close the parent category of migration.
The Government announced yesterday it was trimming the number of migrants getting residency.
The changes included temporarily closing the parent category to new applications and reducing the number of places for family members of migrants from 5500 a year to 2000 a year.
To enter under the parent category, a person must prove they or the child sponsoring them to come to New Zealand has enough income to support them financially.
"I have been concerned about the quality of some of parent category visa applications and the commitments that have been made by both them and their children about support, wherein after gaining residency they are not in a position to sustain themselves,'' Mr Woodhouse said.
"So I want to review that and in the meantime we are going to put a pause on that.''
Last year, 5739 people were given residency under the parent category. It has ranged from 4401 to 6364 over the past decade.
Mr Woodhouse expected the pause to be temporary and hoped to review and reopen the parent category in the middle of next year.
Prime Minister John Key said it would be a temporary measure while the criteria for the category was reviewed.
"We are assessing the impacts of the costs around that on welfare and the likes, just making sure it's set in the right place.''
Chinese migrants would be most affected by immigration rule changes, Massey University sociologist and immigration expert Prof Paul Spoonley said yesterday.
"The parent category is most used by immigrants from China so they will be the ones largely affected by the reduction,'' he said.
China is the largest source country for family-sponsored migrants and made up 50% of residence approvals in the parent category.
"I am not convinced that we are seeing too many approvals under this category but if the total number is to be reduced, then associated categories need to be adjusted,'' Prof Spoonley said.
According to Immigration New Zealand data, nearly 11,000 of migrants older than 50 who entered New Zealand within the NZ Residence Programme were from China.
Last year, China was the largest source country of permanent migrants to New Zealand on 17%, followed by India (16%) and the United Kingdom (11%).
The changes in the two-yearly review of the residency programme will also result in the numbers given residency trimmed from 90,000-100,000 to 85,000-95,000.
Skilled migrants would also require more "points'' to get residency than in the past.
Mr Woodhouse also indicated changes to the numbers of people given work visas were imminent, saying he was reviewing the work visa scheme and expected to make changes soon.
Labour leader Andrew Little said the decision to trim numbers was a "flip-flop'' by National.
"It's certainly a flip-flop on their part and they're doing it under pressure. Ever since the surge in immigration we've been saying there is a growing number of issues and it became apparent this year that those issues were getting acute.''
He said his main concern was that the changes did not address numbers coming on work visas.
"We are bringing in people to do roles that the evidence suggests a lot of New Zealanders could do.''
Mr Woodhouse denied it was a backdown, saying it was important to meet the balance between ensuring New Zealand attracted migrants with the skills it needed while controlling the numbers.
