The Government is rejigging New Zealand's immigration systems in what it describes as a "rebalancing" away from low-skilled, low paying jobs and more towards higher skilled jobs in industries facing staff shortages.
The changes, announced Wednesday by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi, include the introduction of a Green List of "highly skilled roles identified as being in high demand globally and in ongoing shortage in New Zealand."
The Green List includes 44 occupations that allow eligible migrants to apply for work visas from July 4, and residence visas from September.
The occupations are mainly geared towards the construction, health care and IT industries and include roles such as civil engineers, surgeons and other medical practitioners, food technologists and software engineers.
The Green List also lists another 16 occupations which will allow migrants to enter the country on work visas and apply for residence visas after two years.
These include medical roles such as laboratory technicians, occupational therapists and registered nurses and other jobs such as secondary school teachers, electricians, mechanics and dairy farm managers.
The rules give migrants applying for jobs on either list a clear pathway to residence.
The partners of migrants in Green List occupations will also have open work rights.
The Government says the Green List is shorter and more targeted than the current skills shortage list, which it will replace.
The visa application process is also being streamlined to make it easier for employers to hire migrants for jobs on the Green List.
The application process will be entirely online, with Immigration NZ aiming to process all Green List applications within 40 days.
However migrants will still be able to apply for work visas for jobs that are not on the Green List.
In general, migrants filling non-Green List roles will need to be paid a minimum of $27.76 an hour (the median wage), which will be adjusted annually.
However there is a long list of exemptions to that rule, which will require a minimum wage of just $25 a hour, mainly in the tourism and hospitality sector.
A minimum wage of $25.39 will apply for migrants working in personal and disability care roles that do not require higher qualifications.
Work visas for these roles will be for two years, after which they can be extended provided the migrant is being paid at least the NZ median wage.
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77 Comments
Other migrants may have pathways to residence through the skilled migrant category
So fast-track the skills NZ genuinely requires but let businesses to rort the system with low-wage migration through the regular channels.
Hardly a reset, more tinkering as usual!
Hardly a reset. There are so many exceptions or exemptions nearly anyone can get in, unless you're a chef without a qualification. Pretty much just says migrants will have to be paid $3 p/h more than the minimum wage in most cases and if they're well paid can stay sooner. How long did this take to dream up?
Will Immigration get more staff to ensure these applications can get properly verified, not to mention processed faster than non-Green List applications?
So the Key-English "Growth" Strategy is being reignited?
The "Skills based" Immigration lie has been used for what, 30 years? It is just a sliding scale for government to allow all sorts in by simply adding "skills" to the skills list. I'm sure we give it another month and liquor store slave with a worthless polytech business diploma will be on the skills shortage catalog.
All it takes is business lobbying the appropriate minister or bureaucrat to add skills to the shortage list to go back to the Key-English open borders policy.
How can sub median wage be construed as skilled? And let them bring the partner to run NZ's checkouts with no restrictions..
It will be more desperate 3rd world applicants who having paid a fortune to immigration agents will then be returning cash to their employer. This policy just sustains the long term kick in the teeth of unqualified Kiwis. Only a few days ago I wrote praising the govt for putting money into apprenticeships - I'm embarrassed. What is cheaper training a Kiwi who may move on to Australia or hiring a docile (intimidated) foreigner at $25 in hospitality or $27.76 per hour for a 'green list' job?
Commercially, the latter. You don't have to train foreign workers punctual reliable attendance. Thats like the minimum bar.
The 'Re-opening of NZ' to the world, tapping into the global population - will this mitigate the significant falls of 30% + for house prices, or do many still think that these 30% falls will still continue in 2022 for the NZ housing market?
I don't see how migrants earning $25.56 per hour in Auckland or Wellington could set aside enough for a deposit with our sky-high living costs and then afford to borrow a million-dollars to buy a substandard house.
They are living 6 to a 3 bed house and sending every extra dollar they have back to family at home and to pay off the loan shark/immigration agent that got them here in the first place.
You never hear this (especially on ZB) that potentially paying an immigrant is actually making the country poorer
Why can't they hire kiwis?
A minimum wage of $25.39...
Ah, that explains it. So much for "build back better" and such, it's back on the treadmill of low value immigration.
I can speak for one of the named groups as it's my profession. My centre are training Kiwis as fast as we can but there is a shortage of staff that needs filling in the meantime. Training takes ~4 years degree and ~4 years on the job, and the salary is significantly above these thresholds.
We love to hire Kiwis when we can but there are just not enough able to do the job - training has not kept up in the past. It's hard enough getting people into jobs from overseas as the pay is so much better in Australia and the US/Canada.
Finally this government is fighting inflation by flooding the job market with immigrant workers to keep wage growth under control.
Wage inflation came in at 3% last quarter, compared to 6.9% CPI, which shows wage suppression won't cut it this time around.
In fact, importing more consumers in a rush could simply add more to the aggregate demand and push up inflation further over the next few quarters.
Nothing to see hear. Same old same old Kick and Hope
Excellent news for white-collar middle class workers hoping to inflate their mortgage debt away with wage-growth... wait... no it isn't.
As long as there are remotely-qualified workers out there in the world willing to do your job for $28/hour (LCI adjusted), watch out for your boss importing a cheaper replacement.
It's happening widely and quickly
I'm confused. Is anyone not eligible to move to NZ based on this loophole-ridden mess ? Making it 2x or 3x the median as a hard limit would surely better incentivise the 'rebalance' towards high-skilled immigration. This is just a sop to the carnivourous banks, black briefcase toting housing developers, miserly landed estate owners and insomniac gas station superette franchisees of the nation.
There will be no problem attracting more highly skilled people from the Philippines now that the election results are through. The most well educated folk are in mourning at the decline of the country into Duterte and now Marcos 2.0.
... I have lived there .... Duturte did a fairly good job .... expect Bongbong to do well too ... just so long as those Aquinos are kept out of power , all good ...
Ouch...Not also a Quiboloy follower, are you?
I'm a little old fashioned as are many educated Pinoys... preferring their leaders to be less rapey, murderous and plundering.
She talks to us like we are all dumb as F%^$. Clearly she believes it.
Maybe she's been reading Facebook comments.
And just like that, a solution to falling house prices… too easy!
As predicted, all to easy. Basically this is the only major lever that is easy to control with the flick of a pen. Simply open the gates and drive up demand for everything, housing problem solved.
Slamming the borders shut in 2020 didn't change the trajectory of house prices, and opening them again in 2022 isn't going to either. The market isn't being driven by fundamentals like supply and demand.
Au contraire. Low interest rates increased demand.
Interest rates are not a fundamental of the housing market.
The game will never change, tap on/off.
Looks like some quite substantial changes to student visas. Not yet detailed in the article above, but reported elsewhere. Given how much grousing there usually is about those on here, ought to make a few people happy.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/300585618/backdoor-to-reside…
About time.
On the surface this appears to be validating very high immigration levels. Have I got this wrong?
KeithW
Well, was there any mention of quotas or a population plan.....so probably not wrong.
Can we find a link to the 44 'straight to residency green list' professions?
Bring in construction workers as the sector is about to slump…. That would be typical of this government!
Hopefully all of those apprentices we are subsidising now can get jobs in Australia once they qualify. Maybe our Trans Tasman brothers with spot the dead canary in NZ before they hit the interest rate self destruct button and their construction sector can survive.
I agree that house construction will slump soon and it will be profound. But there is quite some pipeline of houses under construction. Most companies have got enough to keep them busy through to Christmas.
KeithW
I've been calling this slump for more than 12 months Keith, long before anyone was discussing it (that's only really started in the last 2-3 months). Part of my income is derived from working in the development advisory space, I know the sector very well, and what's happening on the ground.
I agree the slump won't truly arrive till early 2023, although I think we'll start to see real signs of it from Spring this year.
It's going to get ugly.
Wanted!!
Cheap foreign nurses so we can crush your wage bargaining.
Not on the top tier of the green list, interestingly.
"The minister said the Government has worked closely with businesses on the reforms and understands "that for some sectors it will take time to transition away from a reliance on cheap migrant labour."
"The Government recognises that shift for some sectors is more challenging than others by establishing new sector agreements to assist with the transition. They will provide access for specified sectors to lower-paid migrant workers, and all those employers can continue to hire working holidaymakers at any wage"
Translation:
"Yes we said we'd end NZ's reliance on cheap migrant labour. But, well, on second thought we decided it would be easier to do the exact opposite."
Will NZ First talk immigration closer to the election?
If so, will anyone believe them this time?
Will the Green Party talk about immigration levels?
How will we meet our emissions targets?
The Green party has more important things to worry about, like getting their constitution to reflect their racist and sexist ideologies.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/466386/green-party-leaders-proud-o…
Talking to a large dairy farmer recently and he commented he was getting a Filipino labour unit , when I mentioned 28.00 per hour cost he just laughed and said he would be paying 22.00 per hour because the balance would be clawed back in rent .
"getting a Filipino labour unit". Kinda sad how some employers have reduced human beings to "units".
"filipino labour unit" is doublespeak for peon
Do you prefer being called a 'human resource'? Hmm, perhaps slightly better than 'human unit'? I'm not sure..
What a great human,laughing at rent claw back...
Doing the maths - he's charging the 'unit' about $120 per week in rent for a 40 hour work week, or $240 for an 80 hour week or somewhere in between, after tax. That's not bad.
The only to get kiwis to work for the pathetic wages they offer would be to offer a share of the capital growth of the farm. No chance. Better to moan to the government for slave labour like other primary producers.
Here is the list
https://www.immigration.govt.nz/documents/media/the-green-list-simplifi…
Some of these occupations have the additional protection of professional registrations that will protect the incomes of existing employees in NZ. But some of those occupations are open to interpretation.
Thanks Aj, as I suspected, they are going to let Construction Managers and Quantity Surveyors in just as a wave of people (myself included) complete their tax-payer funded diplomas.
How many will say "thanks for the free education, now goodbye forever"?
Likewise, part way through the Dip in Construction with Strands in QS. However it has some relevance to my current role (estimator in the Civil Construction industry) so really just doing it because it's free and personal development etc. I note the Government appears to have extended the TTAF.
ICT Managers ($120,000) Software Engineer ($120,000) ICT Security Specialist ($120,000). Why are the other jobs not given a salary limit? Twenty years ago I came in as a computer programmer/analyst. I was surprised to discover the low level of ability and wages characteristic of many other computer programmers. They have spent 60 years trying to measure computer skills. Salary remains the only reliable guide and even that is only a rough correlation.
Surely nobody in IT these days needs to be located in the country the company they work for is located in?
50 years ago I graduated and went into computing because I didn't want a job where I interacted with people - I found strangers made me feel awkward. However the reality is a user can never clearly describe what they want and the programmer can never fully understand what is needed so developing computer software means human interactions. I never could write code for the fun of it; I always needed to do it for someone and preferably the end users.
Yes there are IT jobs where you can live anywhere but many need access to the user. Maybe that lack of interaction with users explains why so many websites are badly designed.
Video conferencing software dude, it's ubiquitous. Just today I was on about 7 different calls getting user requirements perfect...
Other rational countries monitor how many immigrants are employed in a work area. Once it gets near 50% they stop immigration. That might mean Filipino nurses are hard to recruit but then the market kicks in and care nurses begin to receive appropriate salaries. Ditto Uber drivers, liquor store managers, checkout operators.
If a govt permits a job type to be dominated by immigrants from countries poorer than NZ then it can fairly be called importing 3rd world wages and conditions.
Yes, this is the intention of the government. National do the same when in power.
I don't know what people are expecting.
We either have a world where you can emigrate, or you can't.
We very clearly have a massive demographic hole made by retiring boomers that we can't fill with indigenous workers. The financing of this has been ignored for decades.
A really good indigenous worker is going to be valued more than a migrant.
For someone in a cannon fodder role, immigration isn't great, but I cannot see any other way.
We either have a world where you can emigrate, or you can't.
Always black and white, one dimensional thinking. No inbetween.
It seems like any time you want to being up talking in dimensions, thats code for making special rules related to your cleverness.
Someone's got to make up the numbers when the best and brightest move to the Gold Coast Hinterland. Eventually.
The Hinterland now is it? Ok then.
Maybe you've been more specific, it would be too hard to tell.
I haven't. I'm just amused at the things you invent.
The hinterland would be pleasant no doubt.
I just wish the large employers didn't use increasing market sufficiency as an excuse not to pay indigenous workers for the (usually) value add.
Same issues,different country;
Warmer weather,higher taxes, but same feelings...
https://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/state-of-the-nation-s…
excerpt;
Disenchantment with Australia’s leaders and concern about “woke” culture were two of the most common reasons why almost 70 per cent of people were not happy with the direction the country is headed in.
News.com.au’s State of the Nation online survey uncovered simmering resentments across a wide range of issues including “corrupt” government, lack of climate change action, expensive housing, fears over China, “too much government control”, and the “rich getting richer”.
There were 13,676 responses from Australians aged over 18 years old, to a survey question that asked people whether they were happy with the direction Australia was heading in. A whopping 68 per cent answered “no”.
The greatest dissatisfaction was among those aged 25-33 and 35-44, with 71 per cent of these groups unhappy, while those aged 55 and over had the highest satisfaction with 34 per cent happy, and 66 per cent unhappy.
They can move to NZ. The great exchange- our disaffected youth for theirs.
They'll be clawing at the walls to go back after a short period experiencing the situation here.
Economics isn't everything to everyone.
"In general, migrants filling non-Green List roles will need to be paid a minimum of $27.76 an hour (the median wage), which will be adjusted annually."
This is a reset??? F%$k sake, this is a pathetic amount. It should have been around $75k per year. Just over the median wage, does not a rich country make. Particularly as it's likely a lagging indicator, you get paid that amount confirmed for your first year, at the end of which, you are now under the median wage...
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