Immigration changes to help regions fill jobs

The Government plans to introduce regional skills shortage lists to make it easier for migrants to fill job vacancies.

Announcing proposed changes to employer-assisted temporary work visas yesterday, Immigration Minister Ian Lees-Galloway said regional skills shortage lists would replace the system of essential skills in demand lists.

The new approach would better reflect skill shortages in regions and provide temporary migrants with a more accurate idea of regional opportunities, he said. New incentives and support for businesses to employ more New Zealanders have also been proposed.

The proposed changes were announced in Ashburton, where a recent report found 500 unfilled jobs, which was holding back the local economy. Mid-Canterbury has traditionally relied on migrant labour, but population growth has not kept kept up with worker demand.

In June last year, Canterbury’s mayors wrote to then immigration minister Michael Woodhouse asking for the Government to place less focus on ‘‘Auckland issues’’ and more on regional needs in immigration policy.

Jonathan Ward, general manager of Mid-Canterbury company Wilson Bulk Transport, was at Lees-Galloway’s announcement. He plans to make a submission on the proposed changes.

Ward said every trucking company he knew of was in need of more drivers and, although it was worse in the regions, it was also hurting main centres like Auckland. There did not seem to be New Zealanders out there to fill vacancies, he said.

Ward’s biggest problem was the time it took to get workers from overseas.

‘‘If someone hands in their notice, you’ve got to wait four months to get a migrant in. That just does not work.’’

Lees-Galloway said the one-size-fitsall approach had been failing regions and industries with acute labour needs, while at the same time loading pressure on Auckland’s infrastructure.

The system was too complex, included too many different visa options and did not adequately respond to regional or sector differences in the labour market,

he said. There were too few checks and balances on employers. New checks on them would help combat migrant exploitation, he said.

Jobs would be checked to make sure New Zealanders were not available to do them. Migrants would still have to meet character and health checks.

Employer-assisted temporary work visas are those where an employer can demonstrate there are no suitable New Zealanders available to do the work.

About 20 per cent (or 47,000) of the

230,000 temporary work visas issued in

2017-18 were employer-assisted. Changes made in August 2017 mean lower-skilled migrants who have

worked in New Zealand for three years are subject to a stand-down period that requires them to leave the country for 12 months. The idea behind that was to prevent a build-up of lower-skilled, lower-paid migrants who are well settled but have no pathway to residence. Prior to the change, they could roll over their visas indefinitely provided their jobs continued to pass a labour market test.

The review is to see if there are other ways to stop that pool of workers building up.

Consultation on the proposed changes is open until March 18, with an announcement on final decisions to be made by mid-2019.