US billionaire spent 12 days in NZ before getting citizenship

Is the real news that they made him show up at all? :)

Nearly every country has "rich people" visas and fast-track citizenship. Rich people don't put pressure on social services and they generated economic activity when they spend money.

That's why drastically raising taxes on the rich is an illusory budget fix. They have options the rest of us don't.

he didn't come in on any of our various tracks, we have investor categories, but they have criteria still.

Why is this news-worthy?

In New Zealand it's a hot topic of debate at the moment, we have many cases where we deny residency or citizenship to people who are working and living in NZ because of not meeting various criteria ( but still fully embracing NZ as their home ) and then we have Peter who meets almost none of the criteria coming in and using special circumstances to obtain it ( the special circumstances being lots of $$$s).

Is it a good thing? I personally think it's ok, there's no real downside for NZ. He's coming and investing in some of the local tech world.

But there's quite a lot of people in NZ who don't like that it can happen, it violates peoples sense of "fairness".