NEW ZEALAND
Sharp drop in skilled immigrants: ‘Employers need these people’
New Zealand’s Immigration Minister Iain LeesGalloway says he is looking at ways of encouraging more skilled immigrants to become residents - after a drop of several thousand in one year. Overall new resident numbers fell from 47,684 to 37,948 in the last financial year and almost three quarters of the change was down to a decrease in skilled immigrants.
Association for Migration and Investment chair June Ranson said the government had been trying to make it harder to get residence visas.
“They have made it tougher on people trying to get residence, but I think in some respects this is going to backfire,” she said.
“Employers need these people and while people may be happy to come in on work visas there’s an expectation that they can, in fact, progress to residence.” While resident numbers fell, temporary work visas were on the rise, up 4000 to more than 230,000. National Party immigration spokesperson Michael Woodhouse said this was the opposite of what the government said it would do.
“So we have this almost perverse trend at the moment where we’re getting very high numbers and increasing the number of lower skilled workers coming in on temporary visas but lower numbers of higher skilled workers gaining residence,” he said.
“That’s a significant drop at a time when our economy most needs skilled migrants. I have no doubt that the dark hand of New Zealand First in the background is influencing that trend.”
New Zealand First was concerned about the number of new residents and the rules were being enforced more stringently as a result, Mr Woodhouse said. “One of the anecdotes that we’ve heard both from employers looking for essential skills visas applications and those applying for residency is that very spurious grounds for declining or for deferring applications are being used by Immigration New Zealand.
“The process is slowing down, the quality of the decisions is poorer by MBIE’s own measures of their performance and that speaks I think to an attitude towards granting visas generally but residence in particular under this government.”
He denied the fall was down to changes that his government made to visa settings when in power. Immigration adviser Arunima Dhingra said fairness was a question that was coming up more and more.