18/10/08 - NZ First policy makes headlines in Asia

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Saturday Oct 18, 2008

At a time when the US elections are hogging international headlines, New Zealand's election got a mention in newspapers in Asia yesterday - and the credit must go to Winston Peters.

From headlines "Suspended Minister turns on China, Immigrants" in the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong to "China, immigrants unwelcomed" in The Straits Times in Singapore, papers across Asia reported on Mr Peters' immigration policy and his description of the free trade agreement with China as "foolish".

Speaking to the Weekend Herald at National's ethnic campaign launch in Auckland yesterday, party leader John Key said the overseas media reports on Mr Peters' anti-immigration plans were "unhelpful" for New Zealand, especially given that countries were competing to attract global talent to ensure progress.

Mr Key, who has ruled out Mr Peters as having any role in any future National coalition Government, and Prime Minister Helen Clark both separately said yesterday that they disagreed with Mr Peters' plans.

Mr Peters wants to reduce the immigration quota from 50,000 to 10,000 and limit the family reunification policy to only immediate family members.

He said the China free trade agreement - which the Government had "foolishly" signed with Beijing - would allow Chinese companies "to set up here and bring their own labour".

Helen Clark says the current immigration quota is fine, and if unemployment went up, cuts would likely be made to work permits rather than the skilled migrant category.

When asked about her concerns on the need to protect jobs for New Zealanders, she replied: "If there is less work around then there needs to be fewer work permits."

However, Helen Clark said the story since she has been Prime Minister has not been "where are the jobs?" but rather "where are the workers?"

Ethnic Affairs Minister Chris Carter is expected to further comment on this at Labour Party's ethnic campaign launch this afternoon where he will also be announcing Labour's ethnic affairs policy.

Richard Howard, chairman of the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment, said any drop in immigration could prove detrimental to the New Zealand economy.

"Immigration may well be one of the few opportunities left for the next government to kick-start the economy," he said.

Mr Howard said New Zealand is "effectively uncompetitive in the international market place" to attract skilled migrants - and its family reunification category "was one of the few drawcards left to bring in the skills we need".

Between last July and June 2008, there were 85,240 (including 23,040 returning New Zealanders) permanent long-term arrivals, but 80,510 (including 58,330 New Zealand citizens) permanently left the country - resulting with a net migration gain of just 4730.

(Source NZ Herald, by Lincoln Tan)

13/10/08 - Implementation of update to skill shortage lists postponed

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Monday, 13 October 2008

The results of the biannual review of the Essential Skills in Demand Lists (the Long Term Skill Shortage List and the Immediate Skill Shortage List) were scheduled to come into effect on 1 December 2008. Although the review is going ahead, the updated lists will not come into effect until 3 March 2009.

12/10/08 - Emigration stats give NZ thumbs up

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Sunday Oct 12, 2008

Clean and green, with short drives to work, stunning views and cheap housing - New Zealand has been getting a glowing airing in Australia this week after an immigration report saying Aussies are heading here to live.

For decades the immigration tide across the Tasman fell in Australia's favour but now New Zealand is the top destination for people leaving the wide brown land permanently.

Australia experienced its biggest annual exodus on record with 76,923 people leaving the country permanently in 2007-08, a 6.7 percent increase on the previous year.

Permanent departures headed for New Zealand (18.4 percent), the United Kingdom (17.8 percent), the United States (9.3 percent), Hong Kong (7.2 percent) and Singapore (6.4 percent).

The Emigration 2007-2008 report found that almost half the Australian residents that left permanently were in skilled jobs and nearly two-thirds were aged between 25 and 54.

Australian news media were quick to embellish the report.

Tabloid current affairs program Today Tonight said Australians were moving to New Zealand because of the clean, green lifestyle and housing was cheaper.

In between shots of idyllic scenery, the program interviewed two Australians who both said housing affordability was a factor for jumping the ditch, even taking into account lower salaries.

That, and being 10 minutes from the beach, and enjoying a view of the CBD from the kitchen window.

Radio broadcast technician Frank Wilcox, who settled in Auckland, described his new hometown as "more laid back (than a bigger city)", and "like a very, very big country town".

He extolled his CBD view from his kitchen, and the lack of traffic snarls.

Private investigator Bryn Shoesmith was impressed he could find houses for $A180,000 ($NZ203,000), rather than expecting to pay up to $A600,000, which is standard in Sydney.

The report showed the top five countries of birth for those leaving were: Australia 39,144, New Zealand 7820, United Kingdom 6047, China 4480 and Hong Kong 2211.

It may help alter the perception that New Zealand is the land of the long white transit lounge.

Nearly 20 percent of the 37,000 Kiwis who crossed the Tasman last year intending to stay in Australia permanently or for at least a year, were born outside New Zealand.

The story made headlines in Australia.

The number of New Zealand citizens born overseas moving to live in Australia was 4187 in 2003, but this rose to 7159 last year.

(Source NZPA, Heather Tyler)

08/10/08 - Migration boss pleads for end to bashing

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Wednesday Oct 08, 2008

The head of immigration New Zealand says immigration department-bashing is not helping the country's fight to bring in the migrants it needs to help boost the economy.

Andrew Annakin believes ongoing attacks on New Zealand's immigration service will restrict the country's already ailing economy by discouraging would-be migrants from applying.

But his pleas appear to be falling on deaf ears with the Kiwi Party, which yesterday released an immigration case to the Herald it says will form the basis for a criminal complaint against the department.

Mr Annakin - who replaced former immigration chief Mary Anne Thompson - says the continuing attacks were also denting staff morale.

"Everybody can bring up an example of an immigration application that didn't go as well as hoped, but who documents the fact that every year, we process hundreds of thousands of entry decisions," he said.

Mr Annakin said immigrants contributed over $8 billion a year, and immigration was one of the key contributors to the economy.

A Labour Department report released on Monday and showing New Zealand's workplace productivity to be among the lowest in the OECD further reinforced the urgent need to attract more skilled migrants.

"Immigration New Zealand plays a very important role as a facilitator to bring in the people New Zealand needs, and it does not help nor is it constructive for it to be constantly under attack," Mr Annakin said.

But Kiwi Party candidate Bernie Ogilvy rejected Mr Annakin's comments.

"What he is effectively saying is that we should let his department get away with murder."

Mr Ogilvy, a former MP, said an immigration case on a Chinese family investigated by Kiwi Immigration Watch showed Immigration "needs to be completely pulled apart and be restructured again."

"Here we have a Chinese immigrant family who had legally obtained their residencies, but taken away illegally by INZ, which then spent years after that lying, forging documents and covering the whole case up," he said.

"We found that staff had also been withholding information from the ministers."

The case - which went on between 2002 and 2008 - "spanned five Labour Immigration Ministers" and was only recently resolved when the department issued a fresh residency approval for the family - but it refused to conduct an investigation on its staff or answer any of the questions the family had, Mr Ogilvy said.

"As a Kiwi, I am embarrassed that we have a system ... which absolutely denigrates people and ignores them," he said.

Kiwi Immigration Watch spokesperson Allan Hughes - a former immigration compliance investigator - said it would take "far more than a replacement for Mary Anne Thompson" to fix the department.

"There is an entire culture within immigration whereby staff treat clients like enemies, and behave like public masters rather than public servants, and that goes far beyond Mary Anne Thompson," he said.

* An earlier version of this story gave a different emphasis to Mr Annakin's comments in the first paragraph.

(Source NZ Herlad, Lincoln Tan)

08/10/08 - Chile Working Holiday Scheme full

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Wednesday, 8 October 2008

The 1000 places available under the Chile Working Holiday Scheme for the year to 30 September 2009 have been filled. A further 1000 places will become available on 1 October 2009.

01/09/08 - Chinese migrant community warning

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1 September 2008

Leaders of the Chinese community in New Zealand are being asked to ensure their people know of new immigration licensing laws which will have a major impact on their migrant community.

As from 4 May 2009, anyone using an immigration adviser for visa or residency applications to Immigration New Zealand, or seeking any specialist immigration advice, will have to use a Licensed Immigration Adviser.

The Chinese community is the second largest ethnic group to migrate to New Zealand in the past decade and, as such, one of the most exposed ethnic groups to the new adviser licensing requirement.

Immigration New Zealand says 5846 Chinese were granted permanent residence in New Zealand in 2006/07 making China the second biggest migrant ethnicity coming to New Zealand for that year – as it has been in recent years.

The Registrar of Licensed Immigration Advisers, Barry Smedts, says it’s important for the Chinese community to know that they need to use a Licensed Immigration Adviser if they are seeking professional immigration advice.

“This could leave members of the Chinese community in difficulty in having visas extended or having their relatives enter New Zealand if they are not dealing with a licensed immigration adviser after 4 May next year”.

Mr Smedts says it’s important for anyone dealing with an adviser now, to ask if they will be licensed by 4 May 2009 – and that message needs to be communicated by leaders of the Chinese community throughout New Zealand.

He says it is fortunate that three members the Chinese community specialising in immigration have become licensed.

“In fact, our very first licensee was Chinese and we have since had two other Chinese become licensed,” says Mr Smedts.

Tony Tse of A & P Investments, who was the first Licensed Immigration Adviser in New Zealand, is encouraging other Chinese advisers to become licensed.

“It is an excellent move by the Government to regulate the industry and to have some control over the standard of immigration advice by having licensed advisers,” he says.

“There have been too many instances of ‘cowboys’ ripping people off and getting away with it over the years. If people use a Licensed Immigration Adviser they will be getting a certain professional level of information and advice.”

The Immigration Advisers Authority has a register of Licensed Immigration Advisers on its website www.iaa.govt.nz.

07/10/08 - More leaving Australia than ever before

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Tuesday Oct 07, 2008

Not such a paradise after all?

CANBERRA - New Zealand is the biggest beneficiary after Australia experienced its biggest annual exodus on record.

Almost 77,000 people left the Australia permanently in 2007-08, a new report shows.

The main countries of intended residence for all permanent departures were New Zealand (18.4 per cent), the United Kingdom (17.8 per cent), the United States (9.3 per cent), Hong Kong (7.2 per cent) and Singapore (6.4 per cent).

The migration from Australia will go only some way to redressing the balance on this side of the Tasman as official figures showed the annual loss of people from New Zealand to Australia hit a 19-1/2-year high in August.

Almost two thirds of those who left the country permanently were aged between 25 and 54.

A further 102,066 Australian residents left the country for a year or more with more than 55 per cent in professional occupations or trades, the Emigration 2007-2008 report shows.

The report showed almost half of those who left Australia permanently were in skilled jobs.

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the figures showed that emigration played a significant role in Australia's current skills shortage.

"Historically high numbers of our young, highly skilled people are moving overseas to live and work," Senator Evans said.

The exodus in 2007-08 represents a 6.7 per cent increase on the previous year and a 325 per cent increase on the low of 18,100 people who left permanently in 1985-86.

"These latest figures also reflect the current global demand for skills and the internationalisation of the labour market as part of the broader process of globalisation," Senator Evans said.

Those leaving are almost equally divided between Australian born and overseas born.

Residents of NSW led the exodus with 31,390 people, followed by Victoria (16,408), Queensland (15,289), Western Australia (8,388) and South Australia (3,140).

Of the permanent departures, 39,467 or 51 per cent were men compared to 37,456 women (49 per cent).

Although there were 149,635 permanent arrivals in 2007-08, the net gain - arrivals minus permanent departures - was the 10th highest recorded.

(Source NZ Herald  AAP)

07/10/08 - Immigrant voters find democracy hard to understand

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Tuesday Oct 07, 2008

Immigrant voters find democracy hard to understand [Botany Poll]

In the electorate where immigrants and Asians outnumber New Zealand-born voters, confusion reigns.

Some voters in Botany are scared to vote against the ruling party for fear of reprisal, and others think National and New Zealand First are the same party because they both start with N.

A Herald street poll of 100 people found nine of 14 Chinese voters planned to give their party vote to Labour even though they wanted a change in government, and four who didn't think their votes were secret.

Three people said they would vote New Zealand First although their preferred Prime Minister was John Key.

One from Malaysia said he would vote NZ First because Winston Peters was in a similar position to a prominent Malaysian politician whom he also supports.

Others thought Helen Clark was standing as their Labour candidate, and not Koro Tawa, because her pictures were on the Labour Party billboards in the electorate.

Such confusion could partly explain why the poll found NZ First to have significantly higher-than-average support in Botany - at 10 per cent, it is more than twice the 3 per cent rating in other opinion polls.

Explaining why she chose NZ First for her party vote when John Key was her preferred PM, first-time voter and Chinese immigrant Doris Yu, 28, said in Mandarin: "I thought NZ First was John Key's party. It is difficult to differentiate between the two parties' logos because both NZ First and National uses the letter N ... I hope I don't make the same mistake on election day."

Another, advertising sales rep Huang I-Chia, 29, of Meadowlands, who came here as a student from Taiwan in 1994, said: "I thought John Key was the leader of NZ First."

A voter who didn't want to be identified, originally from China, said she would vote Labour because she didn't think her vote was secret.

"I am sponsoring my mother for residency and I am worried that if Labour gets re-elected, the Immigration Department will reject my application," she said in Mandarin.

Manying Ip, an associate professor of Asian studies at Auckland University, says many Chinese immigrants struggle to understand democracy.

"They don't believe it when they are told they can vote for whoever they like, and even the more intelligent people from the mainland really fear the Government," she said.

The poll found National candidate Pansy Wong to be the clear favourite for MP, with 52 supporting, compared to only 13 who said they will be voting for Koro Tawa and eight for former Act MP Kenneth Wang.

The party vote shows a much closer fight between the big two - with 40 supporting National and 32 for Labour.

(Source NZ herald, Lincoln Tan)

05/10/08 - One Man Poll: The mood of the heartland

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Saturday Oct 04, 2008

"I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We're supposed to work it."

This famous quote from American theatre critic Alexander Woollcott reappears in the latest newsletter of New Zealand's Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations, with tips for voluntary groups to get their message across in the election campaign.

It applies, of course, not just to organised groups but to all of us. Democracy is not just the five-minute act of voting. It is effective only if we, the voters, use it to voice our hopes and concerns - knowing that political candidates are straining to hear every word we say.

This week, as in the two previous elections, the Herald has given voters a voice after asking 600 of them about the things they feel matter most.

In most cases they were approached at random in the street and asked to give their views. In some respects their mood has changed completely since our first survey in 2002.

At that time, 9 per cent were worried about immigration. That was the year permanent and long-term arrivals peaked at 96,000, with the biggest number from China, and the foreign student boom made downtown Auckland feel like Hong Kong.


"People can only take so many comfortably. We are well over the limit. It's becoming quite frightening," said Avondale Market stallholder Christine Gregory that year.

Our survey also found "a phenomenal depth of anguish" among European New Zealanders about what they felt were unfair advantages for Maori in scholarships, public service jobs and Treaty of Waitangi claims.

Well, we all know what happened. It was messy, even outrageous, but the politicians got the message.

The NZ First Party more than doubled its vote to 10 per cent in the 2002 election. Four months later, Helen Clark's Labour Government tightened the English language test for immigrants. The migrant inflow plunged.

In 2004, National Party leader Don Brash picked up the theme of Maori having unfair "special rights". National's popularity soared. Helen Clark ordered a review of all such rights, abolishing many of them.

In our 2005 survey, immigration and "handouts to Maori" were still up there among voters' top four concerns, but the Government's actions were already weakening them. Only 6 per cent of our sample mentioned immigration. This year, both issues were mentioned by under 2 per cent of our sample. They have become non-issues.

Instead, this year two other major issues that have been consistent concerns through all three surveys have built up to dominate voters' minds.

Economic concerns have always been No 1, even when the economy was growing strongly but many voters were still struggling on low wages.

Since then, house, food and petrol prices have all skyrocketed. Those concerned about taxes and living costs have jumped from 14 per cent of our sample last time to 22 per cent.

The most painful stories were from parents working long hours to make ends meet, sometimes in two jobs, though they wanted and needed to spend more time with their children.

Those worried about crime jumped even more, from 7 per cent last time to 20 per cent. The two issues are related because young people whose parents are busy working long hours instead of being with the family are more liable to be lured into gangs and crime.

If we're working democracy well, we can expect all parties to tell us, between now and November 8, what they would do about these issues.

What they actually do in the end may be just as messy and outrageous as it was on immigration and the Treaty. But if we speak up, it will be our voice that guides them.

(Source NZ Herald, Simon Collins)

30/09/08 - Seasonal worker scheme to be improved - Cosgrove

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Tuesday Sep 30, 2008

The Government says it has learnt lessons from the first year of the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme and is going to improve it.

The RSE enables employers in horticulture and viticulture to recruit up to 5000 overseas workers a year to meet labour shortages.

Last year 78 per cent of the 4681 workers were from Pacific Forum countries, which are prioritised under the scheme.

Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove said today the uptake had exceeded expectations and for the first time in many years there were no concerns about labour shortages during the busy apple harvests in Nelson and Hawke's Bay.

He said that as a result of lessons learnt and all the parties working together to discuss issues, changes would be made:

* There would be improvements to pre-departure orientation information for RSE workers so they knew what to expect when they arrived;

* There would be enhanced pastoral care planning;

* RSE workers would be able to change employers; and

* Employers would be required, on request, to fully disclose all payments received from workers.

In addition, the Department of Labour was:

* Investigating ways of ensuring that health costs were manageable for RSE workers;

* Developing a good practice induction guide to help employers; and

* Looking at the merits of establishing liaison officers to help with "effective communications".

(Source NZPA)