There has been a surge in long term arrivals coming to this country in the year to April

Labour never gave specific number targets.

Really poor.
I never received responses from either Labour or Winnie, after I wrote to them 2 month ago.
Probably too embarrassed.

I voted Labour for this specific reason. This many people arriving year after year is completely nuts. Sadly, they have really dropped the ball here and they've done NOTHING!

Election promises are made to be broken. How old are you, 12?

'It's obvious that both sides of our political spectrum has conceded that our economy can't function without neoliberal mass migration.'

You nailed it.

Quite possibly, we'll see a lift in Auckland's housing market activity before too long......

Low interest rates and low unemployment in particular - amidst the current demographic trends - provide some reasonable rationale.

TTP

How is mass migration a "neoliberal"(?) concept?

Is the UN Migration Compact "neoliberal"?
"Core to the UN's vision was the view that migration was integral to human experience throughout history, a source of "prosperity, innovation and sustainable development in our globalised world"."

Are the Greens "neoliberal" now too?

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/12/explainer-what-is-the-u…

Yes, these graphs have always looked like this. I noticed this at least 15 years ago.

Like you say, correlation doesn't mean causation, but pretty fishy right?

Plenty of people who argue these 2 things are not related at all and it's more down to things like credit availability etc.

TTP, I agree with you for once, about trust. They are stated as fact, but how sure are we of the numbers?

The government is brilliant at talking wishy washy garbage but awful at delivering meaningful actions. All style, no substance (other than the FBB).
Lame.

Yes all the immigrants are construction workers.

Actually I lie, the rest are scientists, IT workers, teachers and doctors.

Not a single barista, baker or cafe manager amongst them.

They're all either going to set up a hugely successful business and pay lots and lots of tax, or be employed and earning like $150k and paying lots of tax and being really productive. Not.

As a matter of fact, there are minimum salary thresholds on essential skills visa but these are currently set at $21.5 (85% of the median wage in NZ and 22% higher than minimum wage). Isn't it obvious that someone making less than an average NZer does not possess an essential skill set?
At these pay rates, I bet a sheer majority of these "skilled" people would be stocking shelves or working in a kitchen somewhere instead of working at construction sites as the government wants us to believe.

Havent you seen all the articles on immigration scams? One of the most popular (both here and in Australia) is where you pay the employee the minimum salary requirement for their visa, then the worker promptly pays half of it back to the employer in cash. Not only does it have the effect of allowing the employer to pay illegal wages, it has the bonus of defrauding the IRD as well as the business is then usually "losing" money, although the owner has a nice sideline in cash for visa jobs going.

We need the existing salary requirement to be $70,000 at least. More importantly, enforced

But surely it's still conditional on meeting certain immigration requirements. I would be surprised - ni shocked and angry - if it wasn't. If someone was able to clarify.

But surely any such trade deal would be reciprocal. Kiwis permitted to buy freehold property in China. Our spy in their parliament.

I just looked at the FTA and it looks like it streamlines temporary visas, but not permanent residence

NZ born babies and new immigrants are level pegging here so the change to the country's population makeup is rapid. In contrast with all the immigration angst in the US they have 3.7:1 baby to immigrant ratio rather than our roughly 1:1.
https://time.com/5588610/us-birth-rates-record-low/

Exactly.

I am glad you brought that up. Our rapidly widening infrastructure gap, low wage growth while living costs swell, zero to negative productivity growth, low R&D exp. to GDP ratio, high child poverty, low levels of literacy and numeracy skills, low number of STEM workers as a proportion of total workforce - if we keep falling behind at this rate, we wouldn't have the privilege to call ourselves a first-world nation for too long.

I'm ambivalent on it but was there ever a voter mandate for this social experiment?

Our main industries and exports aren't exactly the first-world types; that could very well be the reason we are in this pickle today.

We don't exactly require an army of hi-tech engineers or scientists to run an economy majorly based on high-volume tourism and agricultural exports. We can't even do basic necessities like housing right in this country without bringing foreign capital, workers and companies into the mix.

I believe our current state is simply a manifestation of decades of under-investment in infrastructure, productivity and innovation.

That's is the great lie isn't it? Left wing (and thus majority of media ) boost it. But majority of voters are opposed. We know this because all parties, baring greens, claim they will be tough on immigration and reduce it when campaigning. Large scale 3rd world immigration depresses wages and employment for labouring classes, hurting their welfare greatly. But it's popular with reactionary far left, who with world views frozen in adolescence and uncaring of economics just want to overthrow the status quo. It's nodded along with by service industry middle class who's jobs are protected from immigrant competition by the academic and language skills required, and who like access to cheap toilet cleaners and lawn-mowing services. And it's liked by agriculture, manufacturing and retail business owners who benefit from lowered labour costs. But 3rd world immigrants with poor english and education and cultural resistance to integration will frequently cost NZ the best part of a million dollars over a lifetime of poorly paid or no employment in welfare, health and retirement costs. They are generally a terrible investment compared to selecting a cream of hard working educated higher earners who most definitely pay their way in taxes etc.

Labour had little to do with the fall in resident visa numbers. Back in 2016, the National-led government succumbed to valid calls from all sides for slashing migration numbers and introduced a minimum income threshold on resident visa applications. Fortunately, they've linked this threshold to NZ's median income, requiring annual review and changes.
The INZ website reported nearly 50% drop in resident applications immediately after the threshold was enforced, so the current fall in number is the impact of Nat's changes.