New Zealand Flags Visa Fraud in Applications From Nigeria, India and 3 Other Countries
- New Zealand's visa rejection rate for international students jumped to 34% between July and September 2026, up from 13% the previous financial year
- Immigration New Zealand flagged suspected document and financial fraud in applications from Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China
- Bangladesh and India recorded the sharpest rejection spikes, but New Zealand said its refusals target individual applications, not entire nationalities
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New Zealand has raised serious concerns about fraudulent student visa applications, naming Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China as countries where authorities have found falsified documents and misleading financial information.
Immigration New Zealand (INZ) said it recorded 6,273 refusals of full-fee student visa applications between July and September 2026, a figure that almost equals the 7,503 rejections logged across the entire previous financial year.
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The rejection rate for that three-month window rose to 34%, compared with 13% in the 2025–26 financial year, according to figures published by Radio New Zealand.
INZ attributed the rise partly to tighter checks on master's degree applications, where officials say fraudulent supporting documents have become increasingly common.
"INZ is seeing increasingly sophisticated fraud in student visa applications, including genuine documents being altered, reused or repurposed across multiple applications to make those applications appear legitimate," the agency said.
The agency specifically named the five countries in its public statement: "These issues are not unique to Bangladesh or India. Recent declined applications from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria and China have included concerns about fraud or false or misleading information."
Student visa rejection rates rise sharply
Bangladesh and India saw the steepest climbs in refusal rates during the July to September 2026 period, with INZ turning down 70% of Bangladeshi applications and 39% of Indian ones — nearly double their usual rates. The agency did not publish comparable figures for Nigeria, China or Nepal for the same period.
INZ also pointed to the role of recruitment agents in inflating applications. "Fraud can involve groups of applications rather than just individual applicants and can be facilitated by agents. We regularly identify financial evidence being reused across multiple applications," the agency said.
Despite the tightening, New Zealand remains a popular destination. INZ data shows that, in the 2026 calendar year to date, India accounted for 22% of offshore student visa applications (9,103), China 21% (8,751), Bangladesh 9% (3,858) and Nepal 7% (2,924).
UK also tightens student visa rules
New Zealand's increased scrutiny follows similar moves in the United Kingdom, where restrictions introduced on March 26, 2026 affected new overseas student visa applications from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan.
Britain also toughened compliance rules for universities, with the Financial Times reporting that some institutions withdrew admission offers to applicants from Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh over concerns about breaching visa refusal thresholds.
A key distinction, however, separates the two countries' approaches. Unlike the UK, which applied nationality-specific restrictions, New Zealand says its refusals are based on the individual merits and documents of each application, and the concerns raised do not imply wrongdoing by all students from the identified countries.
25 visitor and transit visas in New Zealand
Legit.ng earlier reported that immigration New Zealand has announced that from 1 October 2026, paper applications for a range of visitor and transit visas will no longer be accepted, with all submissions required to go through its enhanced Immigration Online system.
Source: Legit.ng
