Law student and former President of the New Zealand Chinese Students' Association Naisi Chen is Labour's newest candidate.
She's standing in the Auckland electorate seat of East Coast Bays, Labour announced on Tuesday.
Ms Chen is in the final year of her law degree and also sits on the advisory board of the New Zealand China Council.
She says she'll be speaking for young voters who feel left out of politics, and is passionate on housing affordability and reducing inequality.
She and her parents moved to New Zealand when she was five from Beijing, China.
Newshub spoke to Ms Chen about her firm backing of Labour's newly announced immigration policy.
From her experience as a student leader, Ms Chen says that too many foreign students are being exploited.
"I don't think New Zealand is looking after them at the moment, that's definitely a problem and that's what I've been doing in my role as the President of the New Zealand Chinese Students' Association".
"There's been a lot of exploitation of these young students, because they come at a young age without their parents and so they're quite vulnerable".
"We're not ready to have so many international students coming in yet."
She says that there is too much strain on infrastructure in the country and that Labour is right to cut immigration.
"I think that right now the Labour policy has got it right for the time being. Infrastructure is in a huge strain, and I think it's about taking a breather, getting everything right, making everything good again and once we've got to that point we can reconsider everything else."
"I think it's about getting a policy that attracts the right person or the right families for New Zealand at the moment".
Ms Chen was not concerned about joining a political party that in 2015 caused controversy over calculating the percentage of houses sold to those with Chinese sounding surnames.
"Labour as a party has huge respect for the immigrants in our country, for those who were born here and the Chinese people as well.
They are a great promoter of diversity, you can see that we've got a lot of great ethnic background candidates at very high positions".
She's about to graduate, but says she can't afford a house due to the current housing crisis.
She hopes that "in two or three years time when Labour comes into Government that I can actually end up affording a house."
Newshub.
