I think we've been getting it wrong by focusing on 'net migrant' numbers in New Zealand.
We should be concerning ourselves with the arrival numbers - how many people are physically arriving in the country. And when you look at our recent arrival numbers - well, 'concern' is the word. Yes, never mind the 'net'. How many people are arriving? It's too many and the numbers are not showing any clear sign at this stage of slowing - despite the wishful thinking that you might hear.
I say all this after having a detailed crunch through Statistics NZ's migration data going from August 2022, when our borders fully reopened after the pandemic, to the most recent monthly release of international migration figures - for the month of January (released on March 14, 2024).
The 'headline' news in that latest release was that over a rolling 12 month period ending in January, we had an estimated 'net' gain of nearly 134,000 migrants.
But as ever with this migration data, the real news was in looking back at the revised figures for previous months. Very extensive revisions are par for the course.
These revisions showed that for November 2023 what had originally been estimated as a net gain of over 127,000 people was now believed to have been a net gain of over 141,000 - a new record high. The net gain for November was some 11% more than initially estimated by Stats NZ.
Okay, I need to stress up front that, in fairness to Stats NZ, it puts health warnings all over these migration stats. The reasons are detailed and I won't go into them chapter and verse here, but you can find plenty of explanations on the Stats NZ website. Basically the migration figures are estimates and the estimates are constantly revised, with final estimates not being made till 17 months later.
Here is a typical health warning from Stats NZ in terms of using the data:
We encourage customers to make their own judgement on whether to use provisional migration estimates for the latest months, which have higher uncertainty, or provisional migration estimates for older months, which have lower uncertainty. Annual arrival and departure estimates are subject to notably less revision at five to six months after the reference period.
Okay, so, basically the word is that the data gets more reliable as more months go by. The older the date, the more reliable. In the meantime there will be a lot of revisions.
But here's a thing that is not necessarily explicit from first glance at the data.
I can tell you that in the entire period going back to August 2022 the figures for the net migration numbers have only ever been revised UPWARDS from the initial estimates. And usually by a lot.
Fore example, were you perhaps shocked when Stats NZ reported that for January 2023 (still reasonably early days after the border reopening) there was an estimated net migration gain of 5,200 people?
Do you wanna know what Stats NZ says a more accurate figure is now?
Its latest estimate for the January 2023 net migration gain is 10,553. More than DOUBLE the original estimate. And bearing in mind that according to Stats NZ the later revisions are what we should be going by.
So, it really is a case with these monthly releases that if you think the migration numbers are high - wait a few months, they'll be stratospheric. But of course, people don't tend to look back at the revisions later - massive as they may be.
Another example: Six of the monthly net totals since August 2022 have subsequently been, on revision, doubled, or even more than doubled.
What does this look like in hard numbers? Well, numerically the biggest upward revision to a monthly net migration total was by 6,176 people for the month of June of last year. What was originally estimated as a net gain of 5,033 is now estimated to have been a net gain of 11,209. Stressing again that Stats NZ says the newer estimates are the ones we should be looking at. So, 6,176, according to Wikipedia is the population of Alexandra. It seems Alexandra arrived in the country while we were otherwise distracted.
Here in all their detail are the monthly net figures going back to August 2022 and showing the initial estimate and what the most recent estimate (as published in the March 14 Stats NZ release) indicates.
In terms of the annual rolling (12 month) numbers estimated by Stats NZ these also show big increases upon revision.
If we look month-by-month at the figures for the last six months of 2023, there were subsequent revisions made of between 9.1% and 19.9% in the month-by-month, 12-month rolling net totals.
Remember those percentages.
Because, based on those percentages, I am prepared to say with complete confidence that sometime quite soon what was originally reported as a 134,000 net migrant gain in the 12 months to January 2024 will be revised up by maybe 13,000+ to in excess of 147,000 - IE another record high. It might even top the 150,000 mark. Look out for it because it won't be highlighted. I get that figure just by (quite conservatively based on the last six months of revisions) estimating that the figure will be revised up by 10%.
So, next up is a graphic representation of both the monthly net migration estimates and also the 12 month rolling period net figures. Both graphs compare the first estimate produced by Stats NZ with the most recent estimate as per that March news release. (Click on the magnifying glass logo to see the full-sized graphs.)
So, there you can see just how much the figures change.
The biggest culprit for this wide variance in the net migrant figures is the estimates that are produced for DEPARTURES.
Generally, each month the long term departures from the country have been WAY OVERSTATED (by as much as over 6,500 in November 2023) and this of course brings down the NET estimates, making the net figures not look as high as they actually are.
Here's what this looks like in graphic form, again comparing the first estimate with the most recent estimate as of March this year.
Yes, so quite close with the figures in August 2022 - but absolutely miles out subsequently.
Clearly it is particularly difficult to estimate the numbers of departures.
But again, it has to be stressed that the revisions of these estimates have in each and every case only gone in one direction. These have all gone DOWN (which means of course the net migrant numbers go UP).
We can say with near certainty that on any given month the numbers of people estimated to have left the country long term will be too high as stated and will be revised down - meaning that net migration figure will be revised up.
Which brings us on to the arrivals part of the equation.
The first and most obvious thing to say is that the original estimates made for arrivals since August 2022 have been rather closer to what is subsequently estimated. The original estimates are more accurate. It's also worth noting that the revisions have actually gone in both directions, up and down.
In fact there's been four months during that period (including both November and December 2023) when the figures have been revised down. The rest of the months saw upward revisions, with the biggest of these being 3,300 in March of last year.
Here's the graphic presentation of those figures, again comparing the initial estimate with the most recent.
Okay, so, these arrivals figures are maybe the most 'reliable' quick guide we have. And they are telling us things.
Going back to the early 2000s the long-running average of migrant arrivals into NZ has been around 10,000 a month.
Before last year, according to Stats NZ data going back to 2001, there was only ONE occasion prior to the border closure when New Zealand had more than 20,000 migrant arrivals in a month.
And that one occasion?
Well it was February 2020 - IE right before the border was closed!
I would suggest we are not actually playing post-pandemic catch-up with the migrant numbers. No, we have simply returned to 'business as usual' or 'business as was becoming usual' prior to the pandemic.
According to Stats NZ's most recent arrivals estimates (as at March 2024), last year there was only ONE month in which when the inbound numbers did NOT hit 20,000.
And the total that month? It was in April 2023 and it was 19,656. So, 20,000 give, or take!
There is NO CLEAR EVIDENCE YET based on these figures of any slowdown in arrivals. That's not to say it might not happen soon. But it ain't visible yet. We are taking in a consistent 20,000+ a month. That's either Rangiora, or Levin, or Ashburton - take your pick - every month.
The January 2024 arrivals figure has been given as 21,188, which is bigger both than the December 2023 figure and the January 2023 figure. The December figure, at 20,806 (it was revised DOWN by nearly 2,000) was bigger than the December 2023 figure.
In the 12 months to January, according to estimates, over 257,000 people poured into the country.
THIS is the figure we should be looking at and running our immigration policy around.
Until such time as we have a far more reliable early indicator of exactly how many people are leaving the country long term, we shouldn't be trying to finesse our immigrant numbers on some notion of 'net migration'.
The fact is we are letting people pour in at an unprecedented rate.
Now, yes, I know what the counter argument is: "Oh, but if a lot of people start leaving, we'll start getting a net loss and some areas will start to suffer the economic effects of population loss."
Well, we are a long way away from having to worry about that. We could certainly cross that bridge if we ever come to it.
The other reason we should not be using departures as some sort of 'balance' against the numbers pouring into NZ is that every person that leaves the country long term (if they are an NZ citizen or permanent resident) becomes a kind of contingent liability. They can come back in as and when they want. What if there's something really bad that happens internationally and we get a flood of both NZ citizens and permanent residents that have been living offshore back into NZ?
The now dismantled Productivity Commission was alert to this particular risk and made the excellent suggestion - not picked up by the previous Government - that the Government should discontinue the issuance of new Permanent Resident visas for new Residents and require new Residents to renew their Resident visas every six years.
The logical thing for the Government to do right now would be - as far is is practically possible - close the border for new arrivals while there is a 'reset'. But of course that won't happen under this Government.
What we will likely get is the running of a line that says fewer people will want to come as our economy languishes and as unemployment starts to grow.
But I ask you, look at where most of the new non-NZ arrivals are coming from. For a lot of people, it is not that they want to COME to NZ. It is that they want to LEAVE where they are. And that won't change. As long as people can come here they will come.
We've already given ourselves a huge bout of future indigestion by the massive swathes of people that have come here since August 2022 regardless of what happens from now.
This needs decisive action. When you are in a hole, stop digging.
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122 Comments
Amen.
But our super-good-extra-valuable MSM (that is getting closed down or down sized) will continue to focus on "the news that matters" such as some spotty teenager disrespecting a member of parliament.
All salient points DH but I know they will fall on deaf ears “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
Complete absurdity, and there doesn't appear to be any party in parliament even raising this as an issue.
Even NZ First (which, if I recall from early days of political awareness, was always lambasted in the media for being anti-immigrant) has moved on to greener pastures of worrying about in which toilet somebody takes a piss.
It's clear the current government won't do anything about it (because, after all, importing cheap labour to depress wages and prop up rental demand is good for business).
Of all the things the last government did wrong or could have done better, I think caving in to the business lobby and 'opening the floodgates' was the worst thing they did (that is assuming there was ever any desire to control immigration levels in the first place; seems most left parties are equally in favour of mass immigration).
At this rate we can simply never catch up on infrastructure, game over.
Labour did not "cave in to the demands of the business lobby" - this was never their rationale for running an open immigration programme, which they had been doing since they were elected in 2017. It was not new, was not pandemic related, and definitely not anything to do with businesses. Labour oversaw a record number of immigrants (2023 only just beat out 2019 numbers) because they ascribe to the global WEF vision of open borders. See also Canada, USA, Australia.
The Right ascribe to immigration for different reasons. Both Left and Right globally are running huge immigration programmes. The only difference between them is the type of immigrant - the Left hands out permanent residency and citizenship to everyone, while the Right tends to put them on temporary visas (which are usually renewed) but can be terminated at will when required (see Australia during Covid, where Scott Morrison told all the migrants to go home, while Jacinda Ardern gave them all permanent residency and welfare benefits).
The only one against open borders is Donald Trump. And he is roundly decried as a racist for taking that position. Hence why nobody anywhere else is ever going to stick their hand up in public and say that we dont want it either. So it will go on. And on. And on. Until the populations of China, India and Africa are dispersed through the Western world and make up the majority of the population of Western countries.
It was quite the spectacle witnessing the media and faux-thinktanks (lobby groups) who'd for years insisted that high volume immigration has no depressive effects on working Kiwis' wages suddenly flipping to moaning about pressure to pay more and shrieking for more people to be brought into New Zealand to limit wage inflation.
The only one against open borders is Donald Trump.
I think he's on about porous borders where illegal/undocumented migrants are flooding in and (I assume in most cases) claiming asylum.
I don't think he's against legal/lawful (i.e., apply from your existing country of citizenship/residence) immigration. Is he?
Because Winston Peters has only ever cared about identifying 'hot button' issues that get at least 5% of the vote. His spidey senses told him (and it did work out) that transgender toilet issues and re-litigating the Covid response would get him 5% more easily than banging on about immigration, and that's "all she wrote".
Because Winston Peters knew he was joining NACT and that an anti-immigration policy would not have survived the Coalition negotiation. It turned out that it didnt survive the Coalition with Jacinda Ardern either, but that's because she was a bare faced liar not because Winston changed his mind.
Let's see if Labour are prepared to risk it all (politically) at the next election. Will they stand up and say that the system is broken and that they will restructure things to give a better future.?
I note that they are now allowing for land taxes of various forms as a possible option when this was previously a no go.
As long as we operate in a system where a subsequent government can just undo the actions of the previous government to be seen as "doing something" (not specifically bashing the current government, more a reflection on the system as a whole), and with the fundamental societal expectation that no one individual should be put at a disadvantage next year compared to this year (ie, giving up some luxuries or lifestyle to accommodate a restructure of the entire system), nothing will ever change until it's forced to change due to extreme outside influences.
this has been a point of discussion for some time, but it seems most journos tend to avoid it.
I have made the following points several times in the past;
- Goverments sell immigration a form of economics (more people = more growth) but that's a myth
- Governments are too wedded to outdated models that require "growth" which is just interpreted as more of everything but that's wrong too.
- We need to have a target population for the country. I suggest that means less than what we have today.
- The Government needs to gain an understanding of what it means to be the sovereign owner of the NZ$;
- Deficit funding of projects essential to economic activity
- regulation of the banks to limit money creation
- how taxation is applied
- how to build national resilience and create less dependence on imports, and perhaps create more export industry
- How to do this in an environmentally sustainable way.
These are just a few starting points for discussion, but they need vision and courage because people are afraid of change.
Nobody is addressing the lowering birth rate here, and my gut tells me they are only realistically trying to get by for the next 10-20years until the boomers start dropping off at a faster rate. Nothing in terms of policy proposals is giving me any confidence that the middle won't get squeezed beyond belief to keep super universal, healthcare free for an ageing population, but there's going to come a point in the next 10years when the middle, who will be the greatest voting block, will demand more for themselves and hopefully we will see meaningful change for the many over the few. That or they'll kick the can until the demographic changed from the increased deaths and housing supply will be greater than demand without immigration.
Even young immigrants get old. I speak from personal experience.
Instead of immigration and its social cohesion issues why not make NZ a better place to start a family: generous universal child benefit for both cohabiting parents; significantly increase child benefit and accommodation allowances for subsequent children; write off student debt when a child is born.
That would have been a great idea 20 years ago. But considering kids take 20+ years to become productive, its too late now, the boomer demographic bulge is going to cause problems now.
If the real issue is demand for houses etc, what does it matter if the newbys are born in NZ or overseas? If born overseas at least we are not contributing to the world's overpopulation, we are just moving some of it to our country.
I'm pleased to have found another person who thinks a serious investment in children makes sense - morally, socially and economically. A great idea 20 years ago and even more obviously a great idea today.
Of course you are right - there is a twenty years hangover that is causing problems now. But not too difficult to handle - do as most developed countries have done and increase qualifying age for Super. Also like other countries pay less pension. Insist on immigants paying a fee that will cover their eventual Super - in the case of a young immigrant paying above average income tax this might be zero but why our govt allows immigrants who arrived aged 45 to get the same Super as a Kiwi who paid income tax from leaving school aged 18 is beyond me - our low-paid Kiwis transferring money to lopw-paid foreigners.
I'm going to challenge that perspective. I've been doing some thinking about the issues associated with having children; child poverty, quality of parenting, health issues etc. Most are connected in some way.
For millennia parents who wanted to have children had to have the ability to support those children, to provide for them. Children had to be taught to be productive, to contribute to the family when they grew old enough, and that flowed out into society.
NZs recent approach to this has resulted in virtually the opposite. Parents are having children with the expectation that the state will provide for them. They are unable to teach children decent values around discipline, respect for others and to provide for themselves. What kind of adults does this produce?
I'm not against parents having children, but while some argue it is a right, I suggest it is more responsibility. And many who are having children do not have the capability to meet the responsibilities that go with it.
What is wrong is that we continue to elect the same dinosaur parties election after election and then wonder why we continue on this slow death spiral.
Any party that points out our entire system is broken and proposes the radical change that is required i.e. TOP is completely ignored by the electorate and the MSM.
Where do I find one, LBP of course and I'll pay $45/h. This will be for me and work not requiring consent. I suspect these Filipino builders maybe builders in the Philipines but are glorified hammer hands here who do the work of an LBP but don't have to sign off. Whoever is employing them at that rate must be making a killing.
What if there's something really bad that happens internationally and we get a flood of both NZ citizens and permanent residents that have been living offshore back into NZ?
Yes, really important.
At the very least, the government should be looking at the number of ex-pat NZers by the country they now reside in. For example, international events such as a Trump re-election in the US, or a Russian expansion of armed conflict beyond Ukraine, are the kinds of likely events that would see NZs return in greater numbers than the long-run average.
Our Aussie located ex-pats not so much - as both countries are (more or less) immune from these existential threats.
His mind and memory are mush. Those who have fixed views that trump is the greatest won't like this
It's the usual overly dramatic hyperbole from fragile people that take politics far too seriously.
Yes the vaccine mandates and lockdowns could be construed as a dictatorship, if viewed in isolation. Until you look at other countries. For example, Australia had lockdowns and mandates too. A Queensland judge last month ruled vaccine mandates were unlawful.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-28/covid19-vaccine-frontline-worker…
It's easy to sit here on the internet in the glory of hindsight, but at the time we didn't know a lot about the virus. Do you risk 10's of thousands of people dying because you want to preserve people's liberties? Rock and a hard place.
Incorrect.
the government imposed mandate was not under question. What was under question is the directive issued by Queensland Health.
as QH did not make any note of their considerations under the Human Rights Act (qld) the directive was considered unlawful.
Had QH written a single paragraph that they had considered the HR Act and decided that the vaccination requirement was a justified limit due to protection of the vulnerable patients, the directive would not likely have been unlawful.
Read https://www.project2025.org/
The US will be no place for anyone not in the cult.
You couldn't pay me to live under that type of authoritarian regime.
Speaking of "existential threats": there's push as well as pull factors
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2024/03/chris-hipkins-confirms-…
The issue is NZ's and the rest of the world's demographics. The ever falling fertility rate means that as each year passes, there will be less young workers to fund the increasing number of retirees. As a result all parties know that they need to boost the working population with immigrants or they will need to make politically unpalatable changes to superannuation. Labour's complete lack of control of the immigration process was shambolic, but don't expect to see a massive reduction in migrant numbers except for the fact that soon we will begin to see some of the migrants return overseas due to many of them arriving on a visitor or student visa. The key will be getting the right people permanently migrating to NZ and creating a country that encourages our young talent to stay. The opposite has been happening over the last 18 months.
KK get's very sensitive when the flaws of the Western capitalist model and cultural decline is questioned.
There are so many things at play here, however Europeans are going to breed themselves out when females are virtually pushed into pursuing 25+ year careers - it's just the reality of it. Whites have largely abandoned religion as well, the new religion is a Rangie Sport and bach. Developing country immigrants though, they think the West is utopia for large familes.
The Western model requires perpetual growth to be sustained. (and before KK kicks off, Europeans have contributed enormously to the world as we know it).
Actually some of the lowest fertility rates in the world now belong to Asians. Only difference is that Asians start from a much higher population basis thanks to China and India. But over time its likely that small families (or no family) will become the norm for everyone. Except those on welfare benefits, where the more children you have the more money and free housing you get and the less you have to work for living.
The thing is importing people from overseas makes as much sense as sending our garbage overseas and calling it a solution to our garbage problem.
The world is overpopulated, we need to reduce the number of people, and older people need to be supported. The solution is to increase efficiency, produce things we really need and stop producing as much of what we don't. If we all have a billion dollars in the bank and no one to do the work, it makes no difference we are still screwed.
But every efficiency gain seems to be more than sucked up by bureaucracy and producing useless stuff like influencers. We should have the technology to do amazing things, yet somehow everything seems to take longer, and be more expensive than it used to be. E.g $500,000 to build a pedestrian crossing on average.
Fortunately AI is going to replace a large percentage of human workers, so there will still be plenty of jobs for humans in looking after old people, as there wont be much else to do. Unless robots replace them as well. Then there wont be much need for anyone any more.
I think it is a good thing. Great for NZ’s diverse culture and much needed for our economy. We can’t stay a closed off small-minded country. Yes perhaps some further checks / thresholds are warranted, but the general concept of positive immigration to NZ is a good thing for us.
How is it good for the economy, at least in the manner and volume we are experiencing now?
I typically went to school to find out where the parties were going to be on the weekend, but even a dropkick like me paid enough attention in Year 13 economics to know that more supply (in this case of labour) = lower price (i.e. wages). At the same time, we are artificially boosting demand for property. This means higher rents, higher property prices (so more mortgage payments going out the door) ... imagine how much better off almost all of society would be if less money was going out the door each week in collective rent and mortgage payments to banks. Say the average renter woke up tomorrow and was $100 a week better off - much of that cash would be returned to the economy in the form of new spending as opposed to making property investors and/or bank shareholders wealthier.
This is before, of course, we even talk about the insane pressure on infrastructure and services. At the current rate we simply cannot catch up. We need to catch our breath and 're-position' at the bare minimum.
I would agree that there is no issue with immigration if we were being much more discerning about it (i.e. had a much more robust system of identifying what skills are in shortage that are actually important to the basic functioning of society, as opposed to 'nice to haves' like takeaway restaurant chefs and baristas) but at the moment the only limitation seems to be how many times the runway at Auckland Airport can be landed upon in a given day, and the system seems to just say that we need to accept all the 'hangers-on' in order to get the properly skilled migrants doing jobs that cannot be done by somebody already in NZ.
True. Every immigrant gives a one-off suger rush to the NZ economy - GDP. Some even bring money into the country. They need housing, white goods, cars, suitable clothing for Kiwi weather. One off expenditure but they usually stay the rest of their lives. The exceptions being the really talented who ambitiously move on the Australia.
That's a good point JJ and many people seem to miss it.
Every new immigrant to NZ creates demand for extra goods and services which creates demand for more work/jobs, sending positive ripples throughout the economy. That seems to be a more accurate truth than a simplistic logic of "Immigrants are taking our jobs/diluting our salaries".
The value to the economy also ignores the cost of remittances
"87% of migrants were found to have sent money to family back home in the past 12 months and 41% of migrants state that being able to send money to family back home was a key factor in their decision to move to New Zealand. On average, migrants were found to send 11% of their annual income home as remittance." https://www.westernunion.com/blog/en/nz/value-of-remittance-new-zealand/
So billions of dollars is leaking from the NZ economy and propping up other countries economies.
"The World Bank puts out remittance estimates based on IMF balance of payments data. According to those figures, people living in New Zealand sent $US890m ($NZ1.4b) overseas in 2022"
Piggy - No No No I suspect that Emigrants from NZ are more likely to be Drs, Nurses, Engineers, Tradies and migrants to NZ Baristers, Sous Chefs, Burger Flippers and Hammer hands quality v quantity and Govt wonders why NZ productivity is poor. Close the door for a year re evaluate the type of people and experience NZ needs to improve productivity and will integrate into society without insisting their culture be adopted in NZ. Many new migrants to NZ are leaving countries they dislike or find untenable and they are simply economic migrants looking to better their lifestyle neither of which is a NZ problem and we should not be trying to solve it.
It could be a good thing if it was done with some/any thought. We do not have the necessary nation-building programmes to support this level of immigration in any way.
The current level of immigration is going to very much reduce the quality of life for those who were already here.
Hmmm ... When someone actually quantifies the scale of the problem (or benefits) on NZ Inc I'll take more notice.
Far too much hand wringing about immigrants with precious little empirical data on the actual effects.
By all means reply to this comment with links to empirical data & reasoned analysis ...
... but spare me the hand wringing, and 'reckons', and links to opinion pieces.
GDP has tanked. Both government (through 'austerity') and the RBNZ (through high interest rates) are driving an economic contraction. And yet you say it because of immigration? Sorry. Can't see the link. And using per capita is a red herring.
That's 'hand wringing'.
Why so obtuse?
The demand the extra people are putting on resources artificially inflate certain metrics.
You claim government austerity is the reason.. if we had FIVE consecutive quarters of negative GDP per capita, you can't claim the current Government is solely to blame with their recent budget cuts.
If you can't interpret my comment with any kind of reasonable or rational logic, then I don't have the time or the crayons to explain it to you.
Government 'austerity' started officially when Hipkins took over and they publicly canned a whole bunch of projects ... Way back in March '23.
(And those in the know knew before before his predecessor retired, Jan 23. They knew way back then the spend had to slow with pressure was coming thick and fast from all directions.)
When I first was interested in immigration in 2017 you could download detailed data from NZ stats and see what business area permanent residents were employed in. Then they decided to restrict it. BTW in those days chefs were are no1 immigrant - apparently over 600 were needed every year and most of them in Auckland. I think tourist guides came second. There was no attempt to match IRD tax returns so the public could discover how well paid on average was the recent immigrant chef.
Agreed. We don't really have a handle on the actual numbers.
But that doesn't change the point I made.
The numbers are large - but where is the empirically based analysis that it is a problem?
Without any concrete analysis it could well be a major benefit. I.e. without immigration ... We could actually be much worse off!
Well that would be true for me - my house would be worth far less - possibly a million less. I would be worse off financially. However I would still have my house and their might be a chance the three adult chuiildren all in their thirties and all on above average salaries might be able to buy their own house like I did 50 years ago.
I'm not sure why stats in NZ are playing the net migration game the way they are. In early 2020 stats NZ released the figure that we just passed through 5,000,000 people in the country. I wanted to know aggregate demand and the best way to do that is to understand how many people are in the country on any given day. So what I did is I started at 5 million then daily got the passport in passport out from Customs NZ to see if we had population growth or loss. This could be done live according to a mate at customs, all passports are scanned. During Covid, our population reduced dramatically (Tourist left - border closed- Quarantine) It produced an interesting chart of pretty much exactly the number of people in the country on any given day. I used to download it from Customs each month as an Excel spreadsheet, worked really well until coming up to the Election in 2023, Customs all of a sudden would only release the info as a PDF. I complained to Customs and the response was it was too time-consuming to produce. Bollocks it's electronic and we don't need Stats NZ guessing who is a tourist or a permanent we really need to know how many people are in the country.
NZ has been impacted negatively by many things. But if I had to pick one thing that has caused the most damage to our societal fabric it would be the massive immigration over the last 15 years.
When the damage is done we'll look back and say....... Sorry, it's too late the damage is already done and the repair required is impossible.
When was NZ ideal? When my father a blue collar worker and mother a cleaner could afford a house in Papatoetoe and an annual camping trip. That dream blew away for most at the turn of the century.
Thanks Labour. Thanks National. Turkeys
My mum and dad did this. They bought a house for $40,000 in Auckland back in 1981, and raised a family on a single income. My mum was a housewife, my dad worked in manufacturing, for a bottle making company - 20 years he spent there. He lost that job in 1994, when I had just started primary school. I learnt later he was was a casualty of rogeronomics. Long story short. It was more than just losing a job. It meant low-paid insecure work for the rest of my dad's life, picking up whatever odd job he could find. It completely changed our lives - you went from living with dignity to subsisting in shame. But, they were lucky, they still had their mortgage-free house. It's now worth well over $1million dollars, and has been the difference between families in our position doing alright vs being chewed up and spat out. Sadly, that's not an option for working class families these days. The truth is a lot of people associate the influx of immigrants with a decline in their own living standards. I think there have been some clear winners and losers. This is what Trump taps into, and directs for his own nefarious ends.
Just had a haircut from a lovely Indian barber. According to her many recent Indian migrants are shocked at cost of living here, and many will be thinking of moving back, or to Aus. Doesn’t really seem win win situation to me. Although I guess its good for businesses
Unsurprising they'd be shocked. NZ is one of the most expensive developed countries to live in. The Indian migrant will have few reference points to understand relative costs. Unless of course they're well travelled, which would likely mean they're reasonably flush.
At this rate, in 6-7 years new Migrants post-covid will outnumber the current Maori population (847 000). Does this make a treaty signed between the British and Maori less relevant, as new migrants are mainly Chinese, Indian, Filipino or South African? It also highlights the lack of representation of these communities in NZ media and the halls of power. I am not against The Treaty, I am just asking the question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Revanche_des_berceaux
Don't think it has so much to do with Te Tiriti as it does to do with politics/political representation (as per the French in Quebec).
Goes to show first is never believe the figures from a govt department who notoriously get things wrong a further example when Adern govt gave the NZ visa out and IMZ said only 160 000 people will apply yet upwards of 200 000 applied. Secondly shoots the mainstream media and so called intelligent people running around saying brain drain brain drain everyone out the last one out turn the lights out mentality. And finally would be great and I thought with this so called modern technology easy to do. That the NZ residents who are leaving NZ how long have they a NZ citizenship because I would take a punt that alot of them are new NZers using our passport to get into Aus
Clearly it is particularly difficult to estimate the numbers of departures.
Imagine if they invented a system whereby people leaving filled in a wee card on the way out stating their intention and handed it in to Immigration at the airport. It would be revolutionary! And we would have good data. Alas, it is not to be and we have to rely on outdated, revised, and still ultimately a complete guesstimate of what people are doing.
DH has a view that high levels of immigration are a bad thing without explaining why. Remember the ‘rockstar’ economy of a decade or so ago when immigration was at similar levels to now; remember how businesses were desperate for staff a few years ago when the borders were shut and this led to incredibly damaging wage inflation?
There does seem to be an assumption that high immigration levels in NZ are a bad thing and the usual excuse given is that the infrastructure can’t cope. The problem is our inability to build better infrastructure not immigration in my view. We continue to be a small population and it’s well documented that we lack both skilled and non skilled people in our workforce. The bigger picture is that to grow healthily we need more people.
Infrastructure costs a shitload. The average income tax per new immigrant is unlikely to be high. Further, with the rates of immigration we have been seeing it starts to become impossible for infrastructure (and housing) to keep up
It takes a lot of time (and money) to plan, design and build infrastructure
I am pretty confident the net result isn’t so rosy
even if it’s ok, that still doesn’t address my point that it becomes next to impossible for infrastructure (including social ie. health, education) and housing to keep up with these sorts of levels of immigration. These things cannot be elastic enough given lead times and scale
Well, on an average resident visas cost 3 to 6k, and again on an average basis international students pay three to four times higher education fee. They usually also get living costs partly or fully paid by their overseas parents. They only get their visas after extensive health check requirements. So in theory the macro infra load in terms of cost, should be offset by incoming cash flows and tax generated.
Immigration under National was never this high. Labour ran an immigration programme from 2017 that made National look like rookies. 2019 was the previous record high, only beaten by all those who got issued a visa in 2022 and 2023.
And the reason why we were suddenly short of Labour during covid was not due to a lack of people (since very few people actually left the country), but the release of 210,000 people from their visa conditions that tied them to working in low skill, low paid jobs. Once they all had permanent residency (gifted by Jacinda Ardern in 2021) they were free to work wherever they liked, in any job they liked. Which vacated over a hundred thousand low skill jobs which have now been taken up by an influx of new low skilled immigrants.
Well more immigration was supposed to fill jobs and make wage inflation stop. Its now added to consumer demand across all sectors, and we look set to have ingrained inflation across the board, if not spiking in real terms (not just the govt fudged CPI). I expect the immigrants coming in now are well heeled, and top earners in their own country, and so can afford the cost of living, and buying housing.
Well the matter of fact is consumer demand is on the decline and consumer confidence is at an all time low due to reduced disposable income from high mortgage rates. Unfortunately, as much as RBNZ likes to believe that it has all the levers to manage CPI, its actually a puppet to international events and energy demands.
I feel this discussion is 20 years too late. If 20 years ago we had contributed more to the super fund, built better infrastructure, had more kids, or changed the pension age / system, we might be ok to shut up shop now. But unfortunately we did bugger all, and now we face the problem of rapidly growing pension payments that we need young people to pay tax for.
I see four things here. Firstly Stats NZ is pretty useless at doing their job & has been for a while. In fact, I believe they're getting worse not better. Secondly, we run an open border system like most other western cultures, as there's only 40-50 good countries out there & 150+ awful ones. Thirdly, our politicians are a pretty ordinary lot, in keeping with the lower standards in general, being taught in our schools & homes over the last 30-40 years. And lastly, the left of centre lot from those 40-50 good countries are running what was once a pretty successful model into the ground, in most cases, deliberately. Look at NZ. Look at Canada. Look at the USA, look at France, Spain, Germany. Look at what's going on in Canberra recently. It's all the same. Destroy the capitalist west as it is evil. It is not.
The real problem is that all these so-called elite political [left-headed lunatics mostly] people of these so-called civilised nations, are dismantling the institutions, families, communities, cultures, clubs, regions, cities & towns of every description as fast as they can before you & I & all the others realise what has really been going on. And they've been doing it for 40 years now. When will they stop? They are Marxists & have no idea of how to implement anything worthwhile. They are still students, even at 50 & 60 years of age.
They can come back in as and when they want. What if there's something really bad that happens internationally and we get a flood of both NZ citizens and permanent residents that have been living offshore back into NZ?
So, like what literally just happened early in 2020, and lo and behold (helped by stupid low interest rates) house prices jumped 30% +?.
So could we slap an "Infrastructure support charge" on every single person coming into the country?
The recent numbers are pretty shocking when you step back and look at the wider picture of what is going on with the severe need for more of EVERYTHING right now (from which much of the funding is being pulled). Where does it end, at what point does it actually become a "problem"? (personally, I think enough of the voting block (i.e older homeowner's) kids are affected, and have decided they've had enough and move away - or if suddenly they find it hard to access healthcare services - it only becomes an issue when it's personal, as we've seen with the likes of covid and recent massive climate damage)
How is it impossible to do a daily headcount at the border. So many in, so many out. Does not seem hard to me.
For a Wednesday, number published say Friday.
99% plus come by air. A small number of choke points. Then small numbers off ships and sailboats and some few odds.
eg: It cannot be hard to do the daily headcount at Auckland passport control choke point.
Few, if any, go over the border without a passport check.
Daily figure is useful. And helps to verify all the later fiddly numbers DH describes.
Daily arrivals and departures, published weekly on Wednesdays. Data to the preceding Tuesday:
https://www.stats.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Provisional-international-trav…
Great work pulling all that together!!
The government or stats NZ must have someone who knows about this... at least they will now hopefully.
But as it says in the article the numbers, they are publishing are already too high... And they have been for years, decades? I'm a migrant I've been here 11years now, and I'm keenly aware why we are all allowed in, its to repress wages.
I work for a large NZ company, I'm in management now, and I constantly hear about how we "just can’t find anyone to fill x,y,z position" but its totally horse+h"t. We cant find people because what we offer isn’t attractive enough.
We know our governments here and globally bend over backwards to industry leaders and big business. So, if it benefits them to repress wages then so be it, that’s what we all get, open gates and easy to fill positions with cheaper overseas labour.
Pretty much. Job ads are also carefully constructed to facilitate easy internation recruitment.
Look MBIE, we got no suitable domestic candidates. I mean, who would have thought it was so hard to find a Graduate with 10 years industry experience holding a degree not taught in NZ, willing to work for minimum wage and no benefits. So we had no choice but to hire this person from overseas.
Employer then receives a further 3% discount coupon in the form of https://www.ird.govt.nz/kiwisaver/kiwisaver-employers/starting-employee…
Your employee cannot join KiwiSaver if they:
- hold a temporary, visitor, work or student visa
One way to at least have NZ benefit from this influx of people is to charge (based on age etc.) to all migrants to pay into the health system an amount on arrival. The older you are the more you must pay. It may not stop the inward flow, but at least we would get a benefit.
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