Letters from the Southern Man

Migrating is more than just filling in forms and submitting paperwork, its a complex process that will test even the most resilient of people. 

Understanding New Zealand is paramount to your immigration survival and to give you a realistic view of the country, its people and how we see the world, read our weekly Southern Man blogs. Often humorous, sometimes challenging, but always food for thought.

Why does policy discriminate against parents?

I am often asked to explain the New Zealand Government’s seeming aversion to allowing permanent entry to parents of already settled migrants.

It is easy to explain. It is harder to defend.

At the moment I am involved in at least one case where an elderly widowed parent wishes to remain in New Zealand with her only daughter who settled here a few years ago as a skilled migrant. Mum has lived with this daughter, her husband and grandsons for over 20 years since the passing of her own husband. They all moved to New Zealand together – Mum on a Visitor Visa and the rest of the family with Residence Visas already in their passports.

They have continued to live together with what they all identify as their primary family unit ever since.

Unfortunately for her, she still has two sons living in her ‘home’ country and therefore she fails the centre of gravity test which requires her to have the same number or more adult children living in New Zealand than in any other country, including the ‘home’ country.

Although these two sons are in no position financially and indeed geographically to have her live with them, policy takes no account of this.

The rationale for this policy and its restrictions are clear – New Zealand has an aging population and the older we get the greater the cost to the public health system in particular. I know this – thanks to a private meeting I had with a Minister of Immigration a few years ago when they were reviewing and considering dumping the policy.

My question to the Minister at the time was ‘Minister you can tell me what the average public health spend is per annum on a 75 year old, but can you tell me what the gross economic, not to mention social benefit, is when you consider what the children of these parents bring to New Zealand i.e. the combined big picture?”

The answer was ‘No Iain, there have been no studies into that.”

So in a nutshell then, Government can tell us the cost of parents but cannot quantify the benefits. Either economic or social.

It is interesting that the Australians have a policy that allows widowed or divorced parents to be included in their offspring’s General Skill application (the equivalent of our Skilled Migrant Category). The catch is that if the parent is found to not meet an acceptable standard of health then everyone is rejected and the application is declined.

Fair enough in my view. Nice to see the Aussies taking a more practical and humanitarian approach to the issue.

The fact is if we had the same policy, New Zealand would likely get two skilled migrants, their children and one grandparent as a package deal.

The inclusion of the grandparent allows both their children to go out and find work. Grandma is usually going to act as a secondary caregiver taking the financial pressure off their children in terms of costly day care. It allows the state to receive taxes from both the two adult migrants who work. And these taxes should not be under estimated. If both are earning the average annual salary of $50,000 then the Government is picking up close to $16,000 a year in taxes. If Grandma was healthy and remains so she is not going to be a net user of the public health system for many years, if ever, given the incredibly high standard of health all migrants to New Zealand must demonstrate.

Of course if Grandma is healthy she may well wish to go to work herself, even on a part time basis, and therefore contributing directly to the public finances of which she will one day become a recipient of.

In the case of my client she is a registered (in NZ) nurse and has in fact been working despite her age. Her skills continue to be in demand and we have kept her in New Zealand so far on Essential Skills Work Visas despite her age.

An approach to the Minister to grant an exception to the requirement to have the same or more children in New Zealand, notwithstanding the clear economic argument, was rejected.

Unfortunately the Minister clearly found no reason to even consider the humanitarian aspects of the case – the primary family unit for this applicant has been her daughter and son-in-law since her husband died over 20 years ago.

Of course a great many parents also are independently wealthy – bringing with them pensions and other capital to fund their housing and day to day needs – often preferring to have private medical insurance to having to rely on the public health system (despite its quality). 

What would be wrong with some sort of means test? We do it for those seeking two year temporary Retirement Visas. We even demand that they hold medical insurance during their temporary stay in New Zealand. If we can accommodate that why can’t we demand the same of parents? I know many of my clients would happily agree to hold comprehensive medical insurance as the price of entry.

I am not arguing here for open slather on parents. I also know, off the record, that this, and the previous Government’s, real issue is China’s one child policy. For every skilled migrant we get from that country we are usually going to end up with two sets, of often poor parents.

I am arguing for policy to at least be able to consider cases like this which have a clear and demonstrable economic as well as social benefit to New Zealand.

Why not have some other criteria such as minimum net worth (I am not suggesting it has to be brought to New Zealand) that migrant parents can draw on if they choose. Limit their access to the public health system (they are like everyone physically in New Zealand covered by our no faults public health insurance scheme). If we had these criteria clearly stated up front, parents and their skilled migrant children would know the parameters required for gaining entry and what their future costs and responsibilities would be.

I can just hear the policy wonks in Wellington sighing as they read this. They will be thinking, yeah so we let them in and say they have to hold medical insurance but five years later they lose everything and can no longer afford it – are we meant to chuck them out?

Well to that line of argument, I would argue the case of a client of mine who got her Residence Visa recently in apparently good (and well tested) health got to New Zealand and was within a few months diagnosed with cancer and has had, and will continue to have, all her treatment covered by the state system. No one is talking of chucking her out. Given breast cancer affects one in eight women, no one is seriously arguing we stop all sexually mature adult females migrating to New Zealand, despite the clear financial risk of doing so.

Ultimately parents have a valuable role to play in strengthening the families they may well have been a part of in the home country when the three generations move to New Zealand.

Right now the attitude of this Government is that my client should leave.  If that means her daughter and son-in-law go with her that is their problem.

Not only is that incredibly cruel, it is short sighted in the extreme given the clear economic benefits of keeping them all in New Zealand and it is an intellectually weak argument. It is a policy built on one factor – future potential health costs – which can be mitigated by a few tweaks of the policy.

We do it with other migrants – why don’t we start doing it with parents?

Until next week

Southern Man - Iain MacLeod