Net migration gain from China up 32% in March year

Strong growth in migration from China pushes total migration gain up 10.9% in year to March, Statistics NZ says, as it revises February year estimate down

14th May 19, 12:10pm by Greg Ninness

Population growth from migration remains at extremely high levels, with Statistics NZ estimating there was a net gain of 56,137 people in the 12 months to March.

That was up 10.9% on the net gain of 50,628 in the year to March 2018.

The net gain was the result of 152,212 permanent or long-term arrivals in the March year, less 96,075 permanent or long-term departures.

However the migration estimates published by Statistics NZ continue to show significant volatility and are subject to substantial revisions.

Statistics NZ has revised is estimated net gain for the 12 months to February down from 61,600, which was the figure it released last month, to 55,100.

However even with the revisions, the figures show net migration gains continue to run at very high levels.

The March year figures show a net loss of 10,001 New Zealand citizens during that period and a net gain of 66,138 citizens of other countries.

The biggest source country for long-term arrivals was China with a net gain 10,060 in the 12 months to March. This was up 31.6% compared to the previous 12 months, plus there was also a net gain of 545 people from Hong Kong.

That was followed by a net gain of 9144 from India, which was down 2.9% compared to a year ago, South Africa 7343 (+36.7%), and the Philippines 6393 (-20.5%).

By visa type, the biggest group of arrivals were 45,124 New Zealand and Australian citizens (who do not require visas), which was up 4.1% on the previous 12 months.

The next biggest group were people arriving on work visas, 33,260 (+10.3%), 32,289 visitor visas (+21.7%), 26,037 student visas (+3.9%) and 14,159 residency visas (-6.8%).

Statistics NZ still does not have regional migration figures available under its new system of measuring arrivals and departures from the country.

The comment stream on this story is now closed.

Net long term migration

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Source: Statistics NZ

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68 Comments

by Tui12 | 14th May 19, 12:30pm 1557793815

Awesome. Wonder what the net migration of Kiwis into China is

by Mrs The Point | 14th May 19, 3:23pm 1557804232

Number of Kiwis to get Citizenship in China last year 1.

by Narrabeen Boy | 14th May 19, 12:34pm 1557794094

And they all need somewhere to live.

by Squishy | 14th May 19, 12:37pm 1557794221

Hopefully some of them will be builders.

by Fritz | 14th May 19, 6:06pm 1557813981

Yeah.
I wouldn't have such a problem with mass immigration if our infrastructure could keep up. But it can't.
And neither can our housing.
It's such a farcical shambles.

by christlucas | 14th May 19, 12:40pm 1557794451

At what point will we of reached Utopia? when we are say 80% Chinese and our first language is Mandarin

by Timmyboy | 14th May 19, 12:41pm 1557794463

We are rapidly turning the lifeboat into the Titanic.

by rastus1 | 14th May 19, 12:47pm 1557794855

Winston?

by Yvil | 14th May 19, 2:48pm 1557802124

Jacinda?

by rastus1 | 14th May 19, 3:36pm 1557804972

I thought Winnie was running the ship...or so say the bitter right.

by Withay | 14th May 19, 4:55pm 1557809702

I think it might be a case of the ship being rudderless...

by Fritz | 14th May 19, 6:07pm 1557814030

Jacinda loves immigrants. The more the merrier.

by alittle | 16th May 19, 9:55am 1557957314

Have got power and now what does it matter.

by VeryInterested | 14th May 19, 12:48pm 1557794885

Time to consider an exit from New Zealand!

by Advisor | 14th May 19, 1:02pm 1557795770

Thousands are way ahead of ya. 47 percent of those departing this year for the long-term were NZ citizens!

by Pragmatist | 14th May 19, 1:51pm 1557798674

How many were NZ born NZ citizens, and how many came here, got NZ citizenship to get into their real country of choice I wonder?

Is there an easy place to look up the number of residency visas issued? Don't really care how many are coming on student and work visas if they then leave afterwards, so its really the permanent residency visas that matter. (which the above article states is -6.8% YoY?)

by Advisor | 14th May 19, 3:25pm 1557804345

I am certain several recent migrants head straight for the airport from their citizenship grant ceremony in search of better prospects overseas.
Many of these move to NZ to treat it as a backdoor to the West. Others wake up to the fact that NZ isn't exactly the the advanced, progressive country like the pipe dream they were sold by a recruiter or education agent.

by Greg Ninness | 14th May 19, 3:59pm 1557806370

There were 14,159 arrivals on residency visas in 12 months to March.

by Pragmatist | 14th May 19, 4:39pm 1557808794

I'm more interested in total residency visas issued.. including to those that are already in country.

Its here :https://www.immigration.govt.nz/documents/statistics/statistics-residen…

2015/2016 was the peak (57.9k), 16/17 dropped a bit (52.4k), 2017/18 was down a decent amount (43.9k) and this year (ends in jun) extrapolates to be about 51.9k, so rising again (assuming issuance throughout the year is fairly constant.)

by Lapun | 14th May 19, 8:03pm 1557821016

Try https://www.immigration.govt.nz/documents/statistics/statistics-residen…
your data is for applications. Approvals are
15/16 = 52,052
16/17 = 47,684
17/18 = 37,948
18/19 = 28,599 for the 10 months from July to April.
There are figures by country of origin and for China; the numbers are declining.

Does anybody know why Labour & NZF aren't boasting about the cut in permanent residency and why National are not accusing them of cutting the engine of growth & productivity?

by Houseworks | 14th May 19, 8:38pm 1557823127

Is it true that since the mosque shootings, the number of immigration applications and or enquiries has jumped. Read it somewhere. Its the exact opposite of what's expected. These stats cover the period but wouldn't be representative just yet.

by Lapun | 14th May 19, 10:40pm 1557830410

Those INZ perm residency stats relate to approvals/rejections but that occurs many months after the application is submitted. A NZ-citizen friend has just applied for perm residency for her partner (they have a two year old child born in NZ) and she has been told it will take 11 months for the application to be processed. Taking a year to process a visa application does mean those Indian's with PhDs in maths/computer science go to Silicon valley or fen rather than wait for NZ. Less bureaucracy, more speed and we would get better migrants.
Mid-2016 INZ arbitrarily decided to freeze the parents reunion visa so there are thousands of applicants who have applications open for over 3 years.

by Pragmatist | 15th May 19, 12:11am 1557835919

Thanks, should've looked closer at the definitions at the top. I read accepted and thought it was the outcome of the application.. not just receipt of the paperwork.

by Joe Wilkes | 14th May 19, 12:57pm 1557795455

Standard government operating procedure from the ‘Dealing with a debt crisis’ playbook.

by Advisor | 14th May 19, 1:04pm 1557795898

- GDP per capita grew at its slowest rate in 11 years between Dec 17 and Dec 18
- Discretionary spending power of people living in Auckland, so called migrant hub and financial capital, is at a historic low
- Despite more tax take from a larger population base, we are unable to arrange enough capital and workers for expanding our infrastructure capacity to house those tens of thousands new arrivals

How long will both Labour and National keep selling this broken "big NZ" dream before they cave and accept the reality.

by takapuna | 14th May 19, 1:00pm 1557795636

Perhaps with such exceptional stupidity NZ deserves the inevitable result. What happened to controls. What happened to the Labour Party promises.

by Davo36 | 14th May 19, 1:12pm 1557796376

They got into government, so they don't need your vote anymore.

by Joe Wilkes | 15th May 19, 8:58am 1557867535

Immigrants in the UK tend to vote ‘Left’ - how does it work here? Has anyone looked at it? If it’s similar here then immigration could play a significant part in swinging things away from the older ‘national’ voting block in the years to come. Be interesting to understand the voting patterns of new arrivals here, I know that in the UK there is a concern in the Tory party ranks that their natural supporters are going to dwindle over the next decade or two.

by Advisor | 15th May 19, 10:59am 1557874786

Interesting topic.
I am certain these parties are well-aware of migrant voting tendencies and therefore tweak migration settings to ensure more future voters. National relaxed rules around foreign investor visas during their term; thousands permanently moved to NZ through these programmes and more business owners will eventually translate into more Nat voters. Also, high-skilled migrants working in the high-value sector prefer National and ACT's policies on entrepreneurship, tax and globalisation.
Labour and Greens have been gradually increasing our humanitarian and Pacifika intake with better prospects for family unification. They are hiking minimum wages each year, so it can be said low-skilled and humanitarian migrants are more likely to vote for them.
I feel NZ First could meet its demise in a few years as more migrants secure voting rights and boomers move on to the after-life.

by Lapun | 15th May 19, 2:37pm 1557887824

""High-skilled migrants working in the high-value sector prefer"": a reduction in immigration. We actually prefer a quieter less violent and peaceful society. Not just my self ex-London but Tang from Hong-Kong and Bhushan from Mumbai.

If NZF actually took immigration seriously when they have power they would get more votes. But they would have to clear out the 'we hate foreigners element'. Seriously means a logical policy - you can't just say under 10k per annum when that is roughly the number of Kiwis marrying foreigners.

by Te Kooti | 14th May 19, 1:06pm 1557795979

How reliable are these numbers ? A net gain of >1% is a pretty decent clip though, I thought Labour had committed to reducing immigration? Anyway, welcome everyone.

by Lapun | 14th May 19, 8:05pm 1557821139

Permanent residency down. Work visas up. Kiwis to OZ down. Pop growth 2% per annum.

by Houseworks | 14th May 19, 1:51pm 1557798669

"by ex socialist | 13th May 19, 1:0
absolute nonsense - why would rentals increase faster than inflation - and how can that happen for a sustained period"

Today's immigration numbers are a very good example why rentals would increase faster than inflation .... thanks INZ and Ian Lees-Galloway

by tothepoint - d… | 14th May 19, 3:38pm 1557805133

Wouldn’t place too much trust in the immigration (or 2018 Census) data coming out of Statistics New Zealand at present........

As you may have heard, that particular Govt Dept (and its CEO) have been facing a few “challenges” of recent.

TTP

by mikekirk29 | 14th May 19, 2:33pm 1557801220

Growth of GDP, according to Mauldin, comes form rising immigration, or rising productivity. Guess: it ain't productivity that is rising in NZ. Wages rise at inflation or below, FIRE economy needs money supply to grow exponentially. It is slowing, so GDP will too. Add in world trade going down and Australia having pneumonia, and NZ is not going to get away with it much longer. The tail on the dog of the world is wagging no longer. In addition letting the over 70s accumulate the housing wealth is sucking demand from the 25-54 group, who have to borrow more to stand still.

by Lapun | 14th May 19, 8:07pm 1557821274

Over 70s moving into retirement villages a booming growth in accommodation.

by 2 Tooth Bora | 14th May 19, 3:04pm 1557803058

One of these days the Government will surprise us with their master plan? As Little said 'time for a breather' and Winston vowed to reduce immigration. At the moment its costing the tax payer millions in health, education, housing and driving down wages while cost of living increases.

by Advisor | 14th May 19, 3:14pm 1557803693

We should be really concerned about the mess we've created over the last decade or so by importing hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers on permanent visas.
They aren't paying nearly enough direct or indirect taxes for the government to fund the expansion of public services they consume. The quick-fix for this net negative influx is to keep adding more low-wage migrants to keep low-value businesses afloat and the house-of-cards economy running until the music stops.
One way or the other, our living standards are set to drop significantly in the long run, thanks to no leadership taking it upon themselves to stop this neoliberal experiment.

by CJ099 | 14th May 19, 3:51pm 1557805871

Immigration still a hot topic in Australia too with the election only days away: BBC article: Australia's election in 11 charts
House prices have soared and wage growth has slowed
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48185276

by Noncents | 14th May 19, 8:54pm 1557824074

Nice link.

House price graph v net overseas migration graphs show a very interesting correlation.

by Property Leader | 14th May 19, 5:03pm 1557810220

This all looks good news to me. Our society is richer financially and socially if we have new intelligent hard working people coming to join us. Why are so many people negative. In the 1950's and 60's when I was kid the 10 pound poms really did little to improve our society. It was all about bringing in white people who the leaders said would integrate better. From memory all they did was take the government jobs and moan telling us all how good it was back home.

by Lapun | 14th May 19, 8:14pm 1557821679

As a POM immigrant I agree. Immigration as a productivity solution has been a failure for 70 years. It did work 150 years ago when there were farms and gold fields to exploit.
I think the plan is to ignore social cohesian and exchange lazy POMs for diligent desperate workers willing to accept 3rd world conditions. https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/auckland-sweet-shop-owners-…
The gap between our establishment and the families living in cars, motels & garages is getting ever wider; so wide they rarely see the other side.

by Advisor | 15th May 19, 8:45am 1557866758

I understand your point. Nobody here is blaming the migrants. We blame the government for neither reducing immigration to manageable numbers nor increasing the rate of housing and infrastructure growth in the country.
Second and more important point: more low-skilled migrants are brought to NZ with deceitful tactics employed by PTEs and migration agents. Once here, these migrants are exploited by businesses with low wages and poor working conditions.
While the government wants us to believe the average migrant coming to NZ is a gifted engineer or a math scholar, the reality is far from it.

by ham n eggs | 15th May 19, 1:40pm 1557884433

"This all looks good news to me. Our society is richer financially..."

try any of the many links detailed here and see if you come to the same conclusion...

http://paulchefurka.ca/

by middleman1 | 14th May 19, 5:03pm 1557810231

The country is staggering under the mass of low quality migration but in they continue to flood, with successive governments seemingly captive to the bureaucrats and business communities driving this. Our national identity is being permanently reshaped wether we like it or not, with 25% of NZrs now not born here. It is a social engineering experiment implemented by ideologues and rubber stamped by politicians which rejects the rising concerns of a significant ppn of the population. This arrogant dismissiveness exploits the tolerance and naiveté of NZrs, was a hallmark of the previous government and the coalition is no different.

by Fritz | 14th May 19, 6:03pm 1557813789

This government has got arrogant before it got even halfway through it's first term!!!!
To be fair to National, and I'm not their biggest fan, I felt like they only got arrogant in their second / third terms.

by Lapun | 14th May 19, 8:16pm 1557821801

It may be worse than 25% since both of my grandchildren were born here but are childre of recent migrants. How long does it take for a child to become a Kiwi?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/112352062/mum-of-nzborn-toddler-my-dau…

by Fritz | 14th May 19, 6:00pm 1557813616

Farce.

by sharetrader | 14th May 19, 6:18pm 1557814707

thats about 10k of new cars on Auckland streets in the past year, only going to get worse year after year
its time to look at more transport options , maybe time to buy that mbike

by Houseworks | 14th May 19, 7:51pm 1557820311

Play skittles on the motorway when dashing between cars

by Withay | 14th May 19, 8:28pm 1557822524

I just paid my motorbike rego and it made me think twice, for a moment at least. Then I remembered how awesome they are :)

by Alter Ego | 14th May 19, 8:20pm 1557822009

Whilst we are on the subject of race, which Nation has rules for one and nuffin in reverse for anyone born in their 'Fair" Nation, or anyone born in this 'Fair" country, after a certain date....but lives in Aussie... Aussie Rules are not playing cricket with NZ....they are using under hand tactics to make sure we are a race apart.......But of course when an Aussie comes to NZ, it is fair play on our Welfare System, our entire Human Rights.........now is this a fair dink-um State of Affairs, or a sea change, that only works one way.........I wonder...Na let me see.....I see many a rule we hold dear........but when it comes to someone else invading our pitch......We pay mightily. (Duh). How Dear can we go......so bleedin dear, we cannot afford any more.

Are ye listening Pollies......One rule for one...one rule for all.....or go home..Aussies in same boat.....We should each pay our way.....no matter what Race, Creed, or ethnic Background..........so tell Aussies and all races alike........cough up, or no likee....go home. .....and if common sense dictates other wise......yer as mad as a chook. Mr Aussie Ruler......but then they all are.......give em an inch...they will take a mile....nuff said.

by Tui12 | 14th May 19, 9:24pm 1557825840

The reason Aussie are not playing cricket with us is because of the article above. Out of control low quality 3rd world immigrants that would not stand a chance of meeting Australia’s standards yet we roll out the red carpet for them and give them PR in a couple of years. Diabolical.

by Lapun | 14th May 19, 10:53pm 1557831183

If cricket was the criteria for immigrants then Sri Lankans, Pakistanis, Indians, South African & Caribbeans with no Chinese or POMs unless they are from Yorkshire.

by KH | 15th May 19, 8:39am 1557866381

Lets go for no growth in population, or better still, reduce it. We would be better off financially. As for the planet, the last thing it needs is more people. We can't control other countries but we can do it in Godzone.

by Davo36 | 15th May 19, 8:53am 1557867196

Growth growth growth is the mantra!

Gotta keep growing!

And coming up with good ideas to improve productivity is hard. So we just import more baristas!

by Lapun | 15th May 19, 2:40pm 1557888057

Brave thing to say on this site - almost everyone wants house prices to remain a high multiple of average wages. Your policy would make property investment a skilled task of distinguishing between good value and bad value property - until recently the only skill required was to avoid leaky homes.

by RickStrauss | 15th May 19, 8:51pm 1557910294

Can't do that, and older or well-landed pollies won't. House prices must be pushed up, not down.

The days of generations trying to leave a better housing situation to those who followed died off with the great post-war generations. Now it's all about self.

by murray86 | 15th May 19, 9:45am 1557870343

Does anyone ever ask the question, or is there any research around how much land is required to support a particular population?

My concern, is that with the current global and local economic situation, climate change etc is that we are essentially turning NZ into a Philippines like slum, over populated, and under resourced. AS PDK keeps saying we live in a finite world, perpetual growth cannot continue indefinitely. When do we as a nation need to turn the immigration tap off permanently?

by Brent Crude | 15th May 19, 11:26am 1557876405

with an entitled long list of tangled human rights, debate has to shift to maintaining NZ's comparative advantage of low population. I understand we're one of only a handful of countries that sits within its carrying capacity with regard natural systems although thats debatable. Bet that got buried fast. Somehow the economy has become the main event that matters - not working out so well for us. Politicians just double down on that and entrench a bad status quo and end up cheating the figures by importing people to mask things like productivity growth in the economy. Quality of life is decreasing but we're richer?! My TV is bigger than my old one, but I can't get the kids to Sat sport cause the roads are jammed. Awesome. More people = more mess. Lifeboat into titanic spot on

by ham n eggs | 15th May 19, 1:35pm 1557884100

"how much land is required to support a particular population"

its petro chemicals that ultimately support the world population ... we are way past normal sustainable population

warning; bad reading ahead
http://paulchefurka.ca/Population.html

by Double-GZ | 15th May 19, 11:08am 1557875291

I'm all for the increase in Chinese immigrants as long as they all come to live in DGZ.

by Pragmatist | 15th May 19, 8:35pm 1557909344

Could get mighty crowded.. Shanghai of the Central suburbs.

by Canton | 15th May 19, 11:13am 1557875587

And the third world sell out continues...

by NZChinese | 15th May 19, 1:00pm 1557882029

LOL. When real estates and associated sectors count for a significant portion of GDP, you must continue to import people to keep it floating. nowadays immigration has a little to do with culture, value etc., is basically a Ponzi scheme.

by Lapun | 15th May 19, 2:45pm 1557888313

NZChinese - if you are an immigrant (unlike the 100% Chinese lady I was drinking coffee with today who has spent all 77 years of her life in NZ) then judging from your comments NZ is lucky to have you.

by NZChinese | 16th May 19, 2:26pm 1557973595

I'm a 1st gen immigrant. Came here when I was 16,and have been here for 17 years.

by Chairman Moa | 15th May 19, 3:38pm 1557891499

may be a nice welcome sign at Auckland Airport "Welcome to Aotearoa, the land of the wrong white crowd"