header001.jpg

NEWS

A variety of immigration, business and general news articles taken from New Zealand newspapers, websites and other sources (sources are mentioned at the bottom of each article) and selected by Terra Nova Consultancy Ltd. It may assist the reader being more or less up-to-date what is happening in Aotearoa, "the Land of the Long White Cloud". Happy reading, enjoy ... and if you have any questions on these updates - please contact us...

Newest article always on top.

Aug
22

17/08/2021 - Full employment, but more people are on benefits

Amidst economic success, realities are hitting home by the day.  

We are at full employment, a great story in itself, but also a sign of a massive pivot required from stimulating demand to boosting supply. 

The benefits of sugar candy economics – the combination of huge government spending and ultra-stimulatory monetary policy - are clear to see.

Read more: 17/08/2021 - Full employment, but more people are on benefits

Aug
20

20/08/2021 - Processing update INZ

Immigration New Zealand (INZ) is operating under the same Alert Level 4 lockdown requirements as all businesses, which means that INZ offices are currently closed and most INZ staff are now working remotely.

While working remotely presents challenges to some of their people, the visa processing workforce have the ability to work from home, which means they are focussing on online applications, including border exceptions.

Read more: 20/08/2021 - Processing update INZ

Aug
06

06/08/2021 - Breaking News - Three interesting news items

Three recent news paper articles worth reading;

Aug
05

05/08/2021 - Two worthwhile articles

Two interesting articles, the first showing the very low unemployement rate indicative of how difficult it is for employers to find staff, while the second one is describing a promising a solution to the ccurrent faltering immigration system;

Aug
04

02/08/2021 - Businesses advised not to underestimate work visa accreditation process

Businesses are being advised to take action now to become an accredited employer under a new work visa scheme - a time consuming and lengthy process.

The government's Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme is expected to be rolled out next June.

But immigration lawyer Aaron Martin at Immigration Law said businesses had no time to waste in getting the paperwork underway.

Businesses seeking accreditation status would be required to demonstrate their trustworthiness in several areas, including labour law compliance, human resources, worker training, benefits, and pay.

Read more: 02/08/2021 - Businesses advised not to underestimate work visa accreditation process

Jul
30

30/07/2021 - Come on NZ Government ...

Come on NZ Government, do something, respect the most basic need of the migrant communities, as this current situation is just untenable. This none reactive Government not willing to listen to migrant families, employers and migrant employees, has and continues to create an increasing gap between NZ and the developed world, on an economic and humane front.

From where I stand, it should be easy to solve this current situation, as follow;

Read more: 30/07/2021 - Come on NZ Government...

Jul
27

24/07/2021 - Migrants filling labour shortage run out of patience with Government

Migrant workers filling skill shortages, such as teachers, nurses, doctors and engineers, are running out of patience with the Government's lack of a clear pathway forward for them. 

More than 10,000 people waiting for skilled migrant visas to be approved

The Government stopped process applications amid Covid, but now many migrants are running out of patience. Source: 1 NEWS

New Zealand's border remains closed to all except residents and citizens and there's a pause on the pathway to residency for skilled migrants, with a processing time of around two years across a number of residency categories.

Read more: 24/07/2021 - Migrants filling labour shortage run out of patience with Government

Jul
26

26/07/2021 - Update - Closing dates various categories

Essential skills will remain open until mid-2022.

Talent - Employer Accreditation closed to applications on 30 June 2021.

Further policies are due to close to applications on 31 October 2021, including the Talent (Accredited Employer) work visa and the Long Term Skill Shortage work visa.  No decision has been made to change the date these visas will close.

I will keep you updated here if things change.

Jul
21

20/07/2021 - More than 1000 registered doctors and nurses waiting in New Zealand residency queue

GPs are urging the Government to urgently re-open residency for healthcare workers to avoid losing them overseas. 

There are more than 1000 registered doctors and nurses stuck in the frozen immigration queue - and Newshub has spoken to one doctor who's giving up and leaving. 

Nina Fransham's first New Zealand holiday was a Kiwi classic - travelling in a campervan, she saw how beautiful the country was and knew it would be great for children. 

She moved from the UK to Northland in December 2019. Loving it so much, she encouraged other foreign doctors to move to Northland - but her love has limits.

"Our lives just feel incredibly temporary and that's incredibly frustrating," she told Newshub. 

Fransham is stuck in the frozen residency queue for skilled migrants - unable to access KiwiSaver, healthcare or buy a house. So next week, she's reluctantly moving back to the UK. 

"No one in their sane mind would fly all the way back to the UK in the middle of a world pandemic working in the NHS."

But she's far from alone.

When COVID-19 hit last year and the borders were slammed shut, Immigration New Zealand also shut down residency applications, leaving 10,000 skilled migrants in the queue.

Immigration New Zealand figures show among them are 901 registered nurses and 235 doctors - like Fransham. They're healthcare workers New Zealand desperately needs, already in the country, working in our health system, just waiting on the Government. 

"GPs leaving the country just worsens an already difficult situation for a lot of practices," says NZ College of General Practitioners medical director Bryan Betty.

National's immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford says the situation is simply illogical.

"We've already got medical professionals here that are being treated so badly in a residents' queue that's going nowhere and they're looking to leave. And guess what we'll have to do? Replace them with more migrant doctors and nurses."

Newshub asked Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi for an interview but he declined, only saying he was working on the issue. 

After pressure, earlier this year he created a border exemption to bring in more healthcare workers.

But he's now starting to lose the ones that are already here, with jobs, because of this unnecessary immigration rigmarole.

Source: Newshub, Amelia Wade

COMMENT TNC: Some of my clients, registered nurses, have thrown in the towel, and guess ... they have gone to Australia! Some of my clients have lost it all, and have now decided to start all over again in Canada as it is a quicker, easier and with a much higher reward with lower living expenses. Hand over fist we are loosing skills, experience, knowledge and valuable business/family links AND our reputation as a compasionate country where all is possible! Wake up NZ Government, wake up!!

Jul
17

17/07/2021 - Government immigration reset blows up in its face

OPINION: It is easy to pull the rug out from under thousands of migrant workers, but nobody ever tells you the carpet might just bounce back and hit you in the face.

The country is now overwhelmed by a wave of economic capacity issues most of which are linked in some way to severely reduced migration and border flows.

Which is why, after scrambling to let migrants know they are not welcome the Government is frantically moving in the opposite direction.

If you were a migrant and feeling angry about how things have gone since lockdown you might take a strange sort of comfort in the way inflation has spiked, job vacancy advertisements have soared, job re-training budgets have proven woefully inadequate to the task of retraining people, and employers have been unable to fill vacancies.

New Zealand Initiative chief economist Eric Crampton has long been a critic of the Government’s policies on immigration and understands why it did not move quicker to extend visas for a longer period of time in March, when everyone was predicting a 1930s-style economic depression.

The somewhat self-defeating part is how the Government did not change tack in August when it became clear the economy was roaring back.

“The Government at that point should have re-assessed and should have given everyone who was here legally in March a much longer-term visa,” he says.

“Another option that we could have been considering ... was just granting residency to everybody that we had done poorly by.”

Crampton says short-term visa extensions for migrants left them scrambling with no idea of what they might be allowed to do long-term.

Which made it harder for them to find jobs because employers were reluctant to take on people who, on paper, might have to leave the country in six months.

On Friday the Government reset its immigration reset from less than eight weeks prior. Although it insists the original reset is still happening (by that it means the second mention of the word ‘reset’ in this paragraph, in case you lost track).

Instead of booting low wage migrants out of the country, or trading them in for a wealthier “high value” breed, workers earning below median wage will now be eligible for two-year working visas.

These visas will still be linked to a single employer and the move will probably postpone uptake of the Government’s accredited employer work visa scheme too. Not a bad thing since some employers seem to think the new accreditation scheme will give them even more power over their migrant “meat”.

The Government tightened the screws on these workers last year when it started renewing their visas in short six- month increments at a time when they were at their most powerless.

What were they going to do? Back then no vaccine had been approved in the United States and flights were few and far between. Even if you caught one, any place worth flying to was probably still in lockdown. The only rational decision was to suck it up, live with the uncertainty, and await a new press release from the immigration minister (first Iain Lees-Galloway then Kris Faafoi) every few months.

It was a last-minute pattern repeated right across a host of visa types including for working holiday visa holders, and it was even worse for people with real aspirations to live here long-term.

The irony is the country seems to have gained nothing from having treated all these different types of migrant workers so badly.
Migrant Workers Association president Anu Kaloti says many migrant workers simply left for other countries as opportunities overseas came up.

“All the people who live in this land must be looked after equally well. So to pit migrants and New Zealanders against each other has been totally the wrong stance.”

The essential skills work visa numbers quoted in the Government’s press release hardly seem likely to topple the entire country into low wage subjugation, and it makes you wonder what the fuss was about.

This decision that many have been calling for will benefit just 18,000 work visa holders while a streamlined process attached to it will help 57,000.

So how about we flip this whole equation around. Rather than looking at this as a way to scare migrants with little to no benefit how about we think of it as an opportunity to sort these problems out with little cost to the economy.

Managed isolation statistics reveal we have been filling up fewer than 250 rooms a day in recent times, which puts us right back to where we were at the beginning of the pandemic in terms of economic constraints.

With such low numbers of people coming through the border it is debatable whether we still need a labour market test for migrant workers preventing them readily filling up workforce gaps.

The labour market test was meant for a time when globalisation was unconstrained and employers could more easily tap into migrant workers overseas. It is a headache to administer, which makes it a dubious priority with Immigration New Zealand’s resources so obviously stretched.

Then there are changes we could make for more permanent migrants. The Cabinet ramping up the planning range for residency applications would be a good start as would doing something with people who have put in expressions of interest for residency.

This would prevent us having to bring more workers through the border to plug the gap.

More importantly we could use this as an opportunity to tackle a major element in the immigration mess we have been reluctant to address.

The root cause of exploitation: visas attached to a single employer.

As Crampton says: “The best protection that workers can ever have in the first instance isn’t the whole set of labour market legislation that still has a lot of process costs on either side of it.”

“It’s having recourse to lots of potential employers who might prefer to bid you away from your current job.”

Source: Stuff, Dileepa Fonseka

COMMENT TNC: The question we should ask, is this something that would help the migrants, are their worries over, is all OK now? Definitely not! What about the large number of families still separated, what about the enormous backlog in EOI's, what about the endless delays in residence applications? Migrants are people we as a country have and will attract for a variety of reasons such as experience and skills while building NZ's human capital. They are not merely numbers as that appears to be the approach from this Government.

Jul
16

16/07/2021 - Thousands of foreign workers allowed to stay in NZ as essential skills visas extended

At least 18,000 visa holders are set to benefit following the Government's decision to extend the duration of some essential skills visas and streamline the application process amid ongoing border closures.

The maximum duration of essential skills visas for jobs paid below the median wage will temporarily increase from 12 months to 24 from Monday. The maximum duration of essential skills visas for jobs paid above the median wage remains at three years.

Read more: 16/07/2021 - Thousands of foreign workers allowed to stay in NZ as essential skills visas...

Covid 19 Notice

As the impact of the coronavirus continues to evolve, we face this unprecedented situation together. The pandemic is affecting all of us. At Terra Nova Consultancy Ltd we wish to reach out and update you on how we are addressing it. Our top priority is to protect the health and safety of our employees, clients, and our communities. Our focus on customer service remains at the center of everything we do, and we are fully committed to continue to serve you with our services, and striving to provide our services without interruption.Please listen and act upon the advise given by the Government, only in that way will we together be able to combat this challenge. And as always, stay healthy and keep safe.

TNC E-books

The Terra Nova e-book page contains publications in e-book and e-news format containing comments and reviews from Terra Nova Consultancy Ltd, and other contributors, that relate to a number of issues from immigration to operating a business.

Some of the Terra Nova e-books e-book and the Terra Nova e-news issues we believe may be quite helpful for prospective immigrants.

Check back regularly to find new editions of our Terra Nova e-book and Terra Nova e-news range.

Contact Details

Terra Nova Consultancy Ltd
14 Glanworth Place, Botany 2106
Manukau, Auckland 2106,
New Zealand

View map

Please arrange visit by appointment.

Mobile: +64 275 706 540

Postal Address:
PO Box 58385, Botany
Manukau, Auckland 2163,
New Zealand

Licensed Immigration Adviser

Johannes Petrus (Peter) Hubertus Cornelis Hendrikx

license.jpg
License number: 200800214

Is your Immigration Adviser
licenced by the NZ Government?
Click here for details www.iaa.govt.nz