Net migration is continuing to come off its peak.
Monthly Statistics New Zealand figures show net migration fell by 6.76% in December 2017 compared to December 2016.
Meanwhile a net 70,000 migrants arrived in the country in 2017 - a 600-person drop from 2016.
Annual net migration reached a record high of 72,400 in the July 2017 year, but has slowed since then.
The latest figures show there were 131,600 migrant arrivals and 61,600 departures in the year to December 2017.
“Most migrants are non-New Zealand citizens,” population statistics senior manager Peter Dolan says.
“While arrivals of non-New Zealand citizen migrants increased to 99,300 in the past 12 months, there was also an increase in those leaving the country after migrating here in the past.”
In comparison, the number of New Zealand citizens leaving this country intending to live long-term overseas and those returning home almost balanced each other out, which had only a small effect on total net migration.
Migration saw a net gain of 71,100 non-New Zealand citizens and a net loss of 1,000 New Zealand citizens in the December 2017 year.
Migrant arrivals were mostly from Australia (20%), United Kingdom (12%), and China (10%). Three in every five migrant arrivals from Australia were returning New Zealand citizens.
Most migrants arrived in New Zealand on work and student visas. Arrivals on work visas rose 11% in the year ended December 2017. The largest increases in work visas were from the United Kingdom and the Philippines.
Westpac senior economist, Anne Boniface, says: "Looking ahead, we continue to expect annual net migration to slow further as arrivals level off, while departures track higher as people who arrived in New Zealand on temporary work and student visas return home.
"In addition, a likely tightening of immigration rules is also set to see fewer non-New Zealand arrivals and fewer people on work and temporary visas staying in New Zealand permanently. However, this doesn’t appear to be a strong trend yet...
"Slower net migration and the associated drag on population growth is one reasons we expect GDP growth to slow over the coming years. However, to date, net migration has slowed only a little, and remains at very high levels."
Net long term migration
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China continued to be the biggest source of migrants on residence visas, though that dipped 9.8 percent to 3,100 in the year, while the total number of residence visas dropped 6.5 percent to 15,500.
There was an 11 percent increase in work visas granted in the year, to 46,200, while student visa numbers dropped 2.3 percent to 24,000.
Short-term visitor arrivals, which include tourists, people visiting family and friends and people travelling for work, reached 3.7 million in the December year, up 6.7 percent from a year earlier. The number of people coming to New Zealand on holiday rose 7.5 percent on an annual basis to 2 million.
http://www.sharechat.co.nz/article/f8c8370c/nz-annual-net-migration-dip…
6.76%! Close the fug' door Jacindy. It's not difficult. Shut down the visa mills. Raise the points required for skilled jobs and cut off the family stream anchors.
Is the same person responsible for this submarine now running INZ? https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a14783891/someone-…
I'm not totally in agreement with you about the family stream. It was shut off two years ago quite arbitrarily; if a NZ citizen has elderly parents with no other family living in a 3rd world country then I have no objection to family reunion so long as all costs are covered: pension, healthcare, accommodation. For example my nephew a USA citizen by birth married a Filipino lady and rather unusually for the Phillipines a single child. Now her mother lives and works in Las Vegas causing no problems to the USA but keeping a family happy. I do draw the line at some of the extended families that have arrived in NZ and the UK.
Hard to define what is 'skilled'. The only evidence was a small survey that said a skilled immigrant in NZ earns less than the NZ average wage. That isn't my idea of skilled especially when you realise how many very high powered immigrants are really well paid (professors, engineers, etc) so the others must be really low-waged and numerous. The best idea would be to insist on an annual payment to the government - if your chef really is good and bringing the customers then say $20,000pa immigrant tax is no big deal. This way we eliminate those dish-washers who are defined as chefs and pay most of their salary back to their employer as a bribe.
Speaking for hours to Microsoft call centre in India doesn’t give me hope service improves merely hiring a smart lower pay scale employee. Go online & Read Microsoft’s latest fiasco with win 10 updates
On that alone I’d suggest your employer should keep you DubleZz
Telecom used to use Philippines call centre help which was equally hopeless
LOL, look at the Net long term migration chart above .. there is a bottom ( Low) every Dec for the last 8 years .. Followed by a High the following Feb each year ....I suppose this is more like a Natural Phenomena then - like tide waves !! :)
However, it is showing that we are tapering off from the peak ( July 2017) on the Annual chart .. so migration tap was tightened well before this Gov was elected ...Or maybe we have fallen out of favour for some ...
On a serious note, now that economies around the world have started picking up again, We might start seeing more young people leave NZ in the coming months for greener pastures O/Seas
Oh, good. I was worried you'd bumped your head.
Yep, we've imported a hell of a lot of organised crime and corruption, and power in the methamphetamine market now lies completely with those importing pseudoephedrine and finished product from the Asian superlabs, and it's almost all facilitated through a subset of the Chinese business community. The locals have long since been pushed aside except at the grunt work level.
Anybody who wants to check out the tiny tip of this iceberg can start by searching the NZHerald archives for "Operation Ghost".
Actually most the multi million drug crime in NZ is directly from imports. It got so bad that new Chinese "locals" were making drug trades of hundreds of thousands in local supermarket car parks. It the big thing, import drugs, swap the proceeds, buy a million dollar home, pick up sweet capital gains on the sale. Unfortunately too many beach front million dollar properties where involved in a few of the recent busts including one by the local yacht marina which had a fire when cooking. After all you are not going to find the large scale drug importers in poorer ends of South Auckland. Most are so well off they have moved proceeds well into property. In the richer neighbourhoods.
I was going to suggest something like that, although I would have aimed it at the "investor" category, I'd have them commit at least a million dollars to a legitimate NZ business and have them pay a 35% tax rate or $100k+ p/a whichever is the greater for 5 years before they can gain residency.
My gut feel is the investor category cannot be fixed. Explain why it produces over 40 Chinese investors to 1 Indian investor. I would have expected the opposite with Indians having commonwealth links, history of fighting with ANZACs and English as a standard language for science and higher education. There are great Indian investors in every continent - trading is in their blood. So why 40 Chinese for 1 Indian??
I would've thought it would be the easiest, as there are fewer of them, I've not seen the stats on who and where people come from on the investor migration charts, so wouldn't be able to elicit an opinion on your final question.
I'm, however, certain that handing out immigration status based upon wealth is a terrible way to qualify people who would be of benefit to NZ.
Loving databases - from the govs own stats for permanent residency from 2010 to 2017. There were 1762 Chinese 'entrepreneurs' and 2968 'Investors'. Same data for India is 50 and 18. That's not including ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
Maybe worth our race relations commissioner investigating - it would be interesting if she found racism in the heart of the dept of Immigration. Then again maybe all the clever Indians go to California and the UK where they are doing famously well creating new businesses. I have both Indian and Chinese friends but I'm too shy to ask them their opinion..
Really?
Look at the graph above and tell me that you think annual figures are stationary around 25,000. To me eyeballing it, it looks more like it shows around 12-15,000...
What's the reasoning for the skill mix changing if only the target is lowered and no changes to the criteria are made?
Here's a link to the MacroBusiness submission to the Australian Department of Home Affairs Migration Program Review. They present evidence supporting their argument for a reduction in Australia's current rate of population growth through migration.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/02/mb-submission-governments-migr…
Great link. I liked this ""Australia’s immigration levels are too high – higher than our cities can absorb. The infrastructure costs of high immigration are excessive and Australia’s infrastructure supply is not keeping up with demand, despite our best efforts. The economic arguments frequently used to justify high immigration fail the evidence test. Empirical data does not support mass immigration. Excessive immigration also damages Australia’s employment market and the environment.""
Annual net migration of NZ citizens:
Year to December 2017: -1000
Year to November 2017: -1300
Year to October 2017: -1400
Year to September 2017: - 1600
Year to August 2017: -1500
Year to July 2017: -1100
I'm not sure the data supports your point here.
edit: sources
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/net-migration-of-70000-in-december-2017-…
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/migration-slows-while-visitor-numbers-ri…
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/annual-net-migration-remains-high-in-oct…
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/annual-net-migration-down-to-71000
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/annual-net-migration-remains-high
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/annual-net-gain-in-migrants-reaches-a-re…
5. Cultural cringe. Along the lines of:
"We're only a small country and we need people who are cleverer than us to show us how to make things work better".
New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote, for crying out loud. Therefore the oldest democratic country. All thanks to our ancestors of course.
Vent alert!
I will never understand the mindless, moronic stupidity of 70,000 per year – never.
What a mess – what an absolutely disgraceful mess, circus and ultimate shambles.
I could talk of what I’ve seen, what I know and heaven forbid, provide anecdotal evidence.
But I won’t– as always, I remain upbeat and believe, possibly naively, that this nonsense will finally be addressed.
I sometimes wish I was of a simple enough mind to actually believe this entire absurdity really was good policy.
So you will not enjoy this quote from Prof Stringer's report on widespread worker exploitation. ""The desk review identified specific cases whereby victims were either sexually abused in their place of employment by their employer or, whereupon entry into New Zealand, the job promised to the migrant turned out to be false, and the migrant was instead forced into prostitution to repay any agents costs associated with relocating to New Zealand. In cases where the job promised is replaced with forced prostitution, temporary migrants may also face exploitation in the form of rights abuse, including not being remunerated and being forced to work for an illegal duration of time.""
Published in 2016 never refuted but no sign of either government thinking it important.
Back in early December we were discussing these issues and I mentioned that I would email the Minister - and asked these two questions:
If your office could provide an update on these, that would be most appreciated.
1. Intention to boost the work of the Labour Inspectorate to address those issues related to migrant worker exploitation.
2. Changes to immigration rules associated with overseas students ability to work while studying in New Zealand.
Got his response today. Wish there was a facility to attach the .pdf file. But the short answer is on Q1 - yes, an increased budget has been approved for the Labour Inspectorate and from this more funds will be available to implement the Migrant Exploitation Prevention Strategy (not that I know what exactly that is!).
On Q2 - they are still thinking about overseas student policy - so no changes presently - meaning the student work visa programme that Key's government introduced is still in place.
Thanks Kate. It will be interesting to see how they tackle Migrant Exploitation; will it be heavy bureaucracy or simple common sense?
While a 2nd year goes by with little activity here is another quote from Prof Stringer's report. ""District Ethnic Services Coordinator Sergeant Gurpreet Arora from the New Zealand Police stated that: The journey starts from India when they apply for their student visas. Many of the families take loans back home. It is expected from those students that once they come here they will repay their loans. So once they come here, if they are not able to find a job and they’re desperate, they resort to other means; committing crime, prostitution.""
Has any one read this ?
The other extreme of the immigration fiasco, you think ?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-got-new-zeal…
Too many politicians and voters think it is mainly foreigners exploiting foreigners so it is none of our business. That is ignoring the fact that the exploiters are usually NZ residents with or on their way to citizenship. Rather like the way my ancestors in Britain had no slaves but were very happy to own shares in companies that traded slaves from Africa to the Americas.
Labour are boasting about their first 100 days but this continues with both the exploited and the exploiters trying to hide the truth. Thank heavens for Kate writing to the minister in a way that elicited a reply - should have done it myself but I was too angry to make sense.
I am really amazed that so many so called smart people, in the business and the government at that time, including the officials/Minister did not realise that this was really selling out NZ for a Famous Name with Money, nothing more. Makes me wonder as to the smartness. If they really did not take any overt/covert consideration for what they gave Thiel in such a hurry, they are all the more not smart....
I think it is fair to say there are strong misgivings among many regarding the previous lax and patently substandard management of what I consider our “mindless” immigration policy.
Best this new government take heed – much was promised and broadcast.
Yes, it’s only been 100 days – however, do delay and dither at your peril.
So maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow – but nevertheless, let’s get on with it please!
Off topic but it is annoying to see one's invention being stolen:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/inspire-me/101110383/swedi…
This is a really good idea and has many benefits. When going for a jog pick up rubbish. It makes the run more interesting as you search for bits of rubbish, it improves the exercise as you regularly crouch down and pick things up, it beautifies your surrounding streets and improves property values, and leaves one feeling smug about doing something for the community. I have also found money and a small bag of hashish and some terrible things. Wear disposable gloves.
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