It is time, in my view, that the New Zealand Government abandon its “business as usual” policy with regards to skilled migrant immigration criteria and makes changes to the Skilled Migrant Immigration Category to reflect the current economic times.
The mechanism used for selecting skilled migrants allows the New Zealand Government to maintain an annual quota of 27,000 people with a ratio of those with job offers and without to move up and down as the local labour market tightens or loosens. Over the past few years the local labour market has been extremely tight and, therefore, it has been logical that the Government afford priority to those people who have offers of skilled employment and who are clearly filling gaps in our labour market. Since the onset of the local and global recession with unemployment trending up from 3.4% this time last year to 4.7% today, we are already seeing pass marks falling for those who do not have offers of skilled employment. This reflects the fact that it is harder for those who need jobs, to get permanent residency, to find them.
Until a few years ago those applying under what is now the Skilled Migrant Category were able to claim bonus points if they had multiples of NZ$100,000. I strongly believe that we should be going back to the future and rewarding those migrants who have no jobs, but more capital as they demonstrably would be able to survive not working for longer and there is no doubt there is a link between settlement outcomes and capital a migrant can bring with them. Having carried out our own research and study, we believe that migrants who bring with them NZ$250,000 should be awarded 5 bonus points, $500,000 10 bonus points and $1 million 20 bonus points.
It is crucial that we encourage skilled migrants to settle here who are going to be able to survive off their own financial fat over those who come with little to nothing (of which there are many).
The difficulty with Immigration policy being so political is that change never comes quickly and tends to be reactive rather than proactive.
Right now what the Government needs is to ensure it continues to get 27,000 skilled migrants a year and we are told that in the current Immigration year the Government will only just reach its target (hence the falling pass marks). As fewer people migrate globally because, for example, they cannot sell their houses or they have less equity in them once they have, and the simple fear of jumping out of one labour market frying pan into our labour market fire, means the New Zealand Government is going to struggle to maintain the inflows it says it wants. This, therefore, calls for new thinking, but by no means radical and an urgent tweak to Skilled Migrant Category criteria. So far the Government has shown little interest in changing the criteria for skilled migrant entry to New Zealand, but the time for action is now.
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