We want to live in a welcoming Aotearoa where migrants with disabilities and health conditions fully belong. But currently, our immigration policy is getting in the way by barring people with disabilities and health conditions from getting visas. We want all political parties to commit to abolishing these Acceptable Standard of Health (ASH) requirements in their election manifestos. With the Labour Party annual conference coming up in late November, please join us in calling on the Labour Party to make this commitment. Read and sign onto our letter to Labour Party members below.

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Tēnā koutou Labour Party members,

We write as migrants, residents and citizens, with and without disabilities, family members, friends, colleagues and supporters.

In pursuit of consensus from all political parties, we urge the Labour Party to work towards a welcoming Aotearoa where disabled immigrants belong. This involves ending disability and health-based discrimination in immigration policy by abolishing the Acceptable Standard of Health requirements and upholding equitable human rights pathways for migrants.

Our request comes ahead of Labour Party's Annual Conference - which we understand to be the last major opportunity to influence Party policy heading into the 2026 election - and after organisers with Migrants Against the Acceptable Standard of Health Aotearoa (MAASHA) have met constructively with Labour MPs on this issue.

Since 1999, the Acceptable Standard of Health (ASH) requirements have been a discriminatory stain on Aotearoa's reputation as a country of equal opportunities for everyone. They have created a hierarchy in which disabled immigrants and families with disabled kids go through hellish visa application processes where they are obliged to prove their worth at every turn. These processes are expensive, exhausting, demoralising, and most of all, unjust.

As tauiwi in these lands, we have been welcomed here under the generous korowai of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The deficit view of disability taken by the ASH requirements comes from a colonial mindset and we tautoko calls by Māori scholars to move towards a Tiriti-based immigration system centred on values like manaakitanga, utu and aroha (care and hospitality, reciprocity and love).

The ASH requirements area breach of disabled people's and children's rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. UN experts have recommended to the New Zealand government to work closely with disabled people's organisations, migrants and refugees to end the disability discrimination being caused by the ASH requirements.

Labour has recognised that healthcare and disability services are not adequately funded, and indeed, it is important that the Party commit to raising and reprioritising revenue towards our vital public services. The current stance scapegoats migrants for the underfunding and only leads to ableist policymaking, rather than allowing our country to grow and thrive with the rich diversity of new contributors to our communities, schools and workplaces. It is ironic that many of the family members of those facing the discrimination are teachers or healthcare workers themselves, filling the very work shortages successive governments have grappled with.

We also highlight that many organisations and experts have backed the call to end the ASH requirements, including Disabled Persons Assembly NZ, Action Station Aotearoa, Migrant Workers Association of Aotearoa and New Zealand International Students’ Association.

Finally, we are aware that Labour could take a number of incremental options to improve on the especially harmful status quo such as removing ASH for a subset of people impacted, or for a subset of disabilities and health conditions covered. Bearing witness every day to the immense toll of this policy, MAASHA's position is that every aspect of it causes harm. Thus it cannot be abolished in its entirety soon enough.

Whether it's a father with kidney disease trying to support his family, a mother trying to keep her disabled child safe from domestic violence or a disabled young person trying to find their way in the world, these requirements take a prolonged toll on physical and mental wellbeing that far outweighs the associated cost. Not being encumbered by the bureaucratic, financial and time-consuming toll of this policy frees people up to be the diverse contributors to our schools, workplaces and communities they can and want to be.

We write in hopes that you will do what is in your power to set Labour Party policy and election manifesto commitments on a path to truly welcoming migrants with disabilities and health conditions in Aotearoa.

Kei roto i te tūmanako, in hope,

Migrants Against the Acceptable Standard of Health Aotearoa, and supporters