The latest figures on New Zealand’s population show we had net migration in the year to March of 24,200 people – fewer people leaving the country and more coming in than the same time last year.
But is that the optimal figure? What is the immigration sweet spot? And is it really a problem that needs to be solved, or a vote-catcher for the generally disgruntled?
Today on The Detail, Distinguished Professor Emeritus Paul Spoonley, who is also a Senior Fellow at Koi Tū: the Centre for Informed Futures, talks about immigration policy settings and why the issue is such a trigger at certain points of the electoral cycle.
“If you look at that electoral cycle and the way in which migrants and migration is politicised, then we have quite a history,” he says.
“You can go back to the 1970s: 1973 the overstayers campaign; the 1996 election which saw New Zealand First arrive in Parliament on an anti-immigrant but mainly an anti-Asian immigrant position; and so we have these periodic, what I would call ‘moral panics’ around migration as though something had suddenly changed and that we needed to care about it in a way that we hadn’t in the previous two years or even longer period.
“So it’s a bit disappointing, really, to see this escalation of migration as somehow a major social problem for New Zealand, that migrants are somehow demonised and seen as the source of those problems.”
One of the developments that have allowed this debate in the door is the Free Trade Agreement signed with India, and the concessions for Indian citizens around work visas, working holidays and student extensions.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says, we’ve seen “an Indian FTA conversation get perverted into a conversation about a fear of mass migration to New Zealand – that is just factually incorrect, and it’s wrong”.
Spoonley says it echoes a long-standing New Zealand First position about concern over the numbers of migrants coming to New Zealand, about their impact of what we might broadly call our political culture and our values … but also a very strong focus on certain migrants, and not others.
“I have a problem with how New Zealand First have characterised the Free Trade Agreement. The numbers that are involved in terms of migrants or family reunification are very specific, and are capped. I doubt that they will add to the numbers very much at all.”
He also points out you don’t hear arguments about values concerning, for example, migrants from the UK, or even from South Africa.
“It’s principally migrants who are deemed to have different values and different cultures and come particularly from Asia.”
Spoonley says in a broad sense we have our immigration settings about right, with a points system allowing us to pick and choose people according to their economic contribution to New Zealand.
“We’re trying to select the best and brightest from around the world, who then will meet a need here, particularly in terms of our labour market.”
And he says it’s wrong to compare us to Europe, where there’s been a failure of immigration systems and a declining social licence for immigration.
“We have a very careful system,” he says. “We have a very small number of people who come here as refugees, and of course we have very few who claim asylum here.”
In 2022, the Productivity Commission – now disestablished – published the findings from an inquiry into what immigration policy settings would be the best for our long term economic growth and wellbeing.
That report, called Immigration – Fit for the Future, said immigration is not likely to be the solution, nor the cause, of the productivity challenges we face. It busted the brain drain myth, pointing out that we were gaining more highly skilled and tertiary-educated residents than we were losing; and said on average, immigration is not driving down wages or replacing local workers.
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