By Peter Wilson and Julie Fry*
Précis
Thousands of short-term migrants are trapped in New Zealand due to COVID-19. A series of ad hoc extensions to their visas have allowed them to stay. The Government should apply principles of manākitanga – hospitality, kindness, generosity, support – and issue these people with a one-off right to remain in New Zealand till the end of 2024. Clearing the backlog of permanent residence visas for people already in New Zealand should also be a priority.
The problem
On 20 March 2020, New Zealand closed its borders in response to COVID-19.
So far, this approach has proved successful in limiting health and economic consequences from the virus – but with relatively low testing and vaccination rates and more contagious and virulent variants continuing to evolve and circulate, we are far from out of the woods.
Success, of course, comes with costs. Citizens and permanent residents have struggled to return home; employers accustomed to ready access to migrant labour have had to adjust to fewer available staff. People who were here on temporary visas when our borders closed have faced ongoing uncertainty and disruption to their lives. It is this final issue that we address here.
Neither here nor there
When the four-level COVID-19 Alert system was announced on 21 March 2020, about 220,000 people were in New Zealand on short term work visas, and another 82,000 were on study visas. About 240,000 of these people have remained here.
New Zealand’s policy of eliminating COVID-19, which is a very different approach to the suppression policies in place in the rest of the world, has made the country a relatively attractive place to stay. But for many people, a combination of limitations on the number of flights out of New Zealand and their high cost; restrictions on transit through usual way-points, like Singapore and Dubai; and restrictions on entry into migrants’ home countries has made leaving difficult. Even if returning home is possible, it may not be safe to do so if hospitals there are overrun.
COVID-19 border restrictions do not technically stop anyone from leaving the country. This is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
Some countries arranged repatriation flights to facilitate the return of their citizens, just as the New Zealand Government helped its own citizens come home.
Rather than force migrants whose visas would otherwise expire to leave, the New Zealand Government has granted some of them permission to stay. These grants have, however, been short term: a six-month extension was announced in July 2020 and then rolled over in December 2020, February 2021 and most recently in June 2021.
On 10 August 2020, the Government suspended the ability for most people outside New Zealand to make a temporary visa application. This suspension remains in force.
Separately, a COVID-19 Short-term Visitor Visa was introduced for people unable to leave New Zealand due to the pandemic. This visa lasts for 2 months, but it is extendable and allows holders to study but not work.
These extensions, however, have included provisions – deliberately one assumes – that reduce their seeming compassion. One particularly egregious provision concerns family reunions. The families of people allowed to enter under border exemptions can subsequently come here. But a person already in New Zealand granted permission to stay cannot bring their family with them, even if they were willing to pay for and could book a slot in a Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) facility.
People in New Zealand on temporary visas can apply for permanent residence. The prospect of permanent residency has been offered to many people coming to New Zealand on a temporary visa. Sometimes this was a false promise. In response to COVID-19, the Government initially suspended permanent residence grants for applicants living overseas to allow Immigration New Zealand to concentrate on people currently in New Zealand. This has created extreme concern amongst migrant communities and has resulted in protests.
Doing the right thing
We think that the Government has not found a sensible solution yet to meet the needs of migrants lawfully in New Zealand when the most severe public health crisis in over a century hit.
A compassionate approach consistent with the principles of manākitanga (showing reciprocal respect, generosity, and care for others) should be applied.
It is not too late to do the right thing.
Baby steps
At the very least, everyone who was in New Zealand lawfully on the day the borders were closed should, subject to health and police checks, be granted an extension of their visas till 31 December 2024, with the same work and other rights as applied on the day of issue. We see no downside to this approach: it simply acknowledges that COVID-19 is a long-term event.
Confident adult strides
An even more compassionate approach would be to issue these people with a new type of visa, again until the end of 2024, giving them full work rights, access to the health system and maybe even social welfare benefits. This is more than an extension of existing rights, but with labour markets proving very tight, it is hard to argue that these people will not be able to get jobs and contribute to New Zealand. When restrictions were initially set, the Government may reasonably have feared far worse unemployment outcomes. It is difficult to argue that extending work rights to those currently in New Zealand would be at the expense of Kiwi workers.
The residency backlog
A related and very high-profile issue is granting residence to people in New Zealand on other visas. Before COVID-19, most people granted a permanent residence visa were already lawfully in New Zealand on another visa. Many had been here for a number of years before becoming eligible for permanent residency. The days of settlers who have never been to New Zealand before arriving with a permanent residence visa stamped in their passport by officials at a New Zealand Embassy are long gone.
The programme of granting permanent residence visas to people with skills and experiences that qualify should be restarted, and the backlog should be cleared as soon as possible. Again, these people are already in New Zealand lawfully and meet all the requirements for a grant of residency. As is usual for people granted permanent residency, they would be allowed to bring any family living offshore here, subject to MIQ procedures.
Meeting our humanitarian obligations
COVID-19 has also had an impact on the number of refugees accepted for resettlement in New Zealand. Although our annual refugee quota was extended to 1500 in July 2020, the Government only settled 242 refugees in the year ended June 2021 because of the impact of the pandemic, border closure, and demand for spaces in MIQ.
New Zealand’s humanitarian efforts are far too low, given our relative prosperity.
COVID-19 is no excuse for not increasing these numbers. Indeed, the dramatic reduction in inwards migration means that our national ‘absorptive capacity’ has increased. If MIQ exemptions can be made for yachting and movie crews, it is hard to see why space cannot be found for people who are literally in fear of their lives.
We note that current trials of refugee sponsorship arrangements could even enable sponsors of refugees to cover any MIQ costs. We would urge that the Government take expert advice on allowing MIQ capacity to increase while maintaining safety to allow more travel, including entry by refugees.
Manākitanga in the age of COVID-19
Hospitality, kindness, generosity, support – in a word, manākitanga – is what New Zealanders are known for. Now is the time to apply those principles and do the right thing for people who have been stuck in New Zealand due to COVID-19.
* Peter Wilson is a principal economist at NZIER. Julie Fry is an Associate at NZIER. This article is a re-post of an NZIER publication. The original is here. It is re-posted with permission.
72 Comments
I agree. The houses that these people occupy are far more important to our young Kiwis who are living in cars, sleeping rough, couch surfing and in motels, than providing cheap labor to prop up inefficient businesses that cannot afford to pay Kiwis a decent wage. Let these businesses go broke, we do not need a surplus of bottle stores, ubber drivers, every second shop a food outlet, etc etc etc. It is very sad for these people, but the fault lies with successive governments who have cynically encouraged them here to prop up a totally unsustainable ponzie economy that is on the cusp of unraveling. Like all ponzie schemes, the longer it runs the worse the consequences will be. As a nation we have to acknowledge what we have been doing this all the way back to encouraging pacific islander here into a far less than ideal lifestyle to suit our selfish needs rather than addressing our productivity shortcomings.
I think that one of the significant factors in our failure to grasp our productivity shortcomings is that the leadership of companies and the country are heavy in the finance, management, and legal skills. These are no use whatsoever in providing the creative attributes that are required to craft companies and organizations that achieve great products, production processes and organization structures. Unfortunately their idea of running a good operation is to keep on producing the same stuff and screwing down the inputs to the point that they kill whatever it is that they are running. Look at the countries that lead and you will find that mostly their companies and governance are lead by people grounded in technology.
I think that we may soon get to the point when overseas nurses will not be interested in coming here. I just heard a rumor that Capital and Coast Health lost 11 Emergency Department nurses in 10 days. They have just had enough and are leaving in droves. The worse it gets, the faster it will get worse.
The Government has a loopy idea that somehow they will attract all the lost nurses back to working for the DHB's. How many people do you know who have ever gone back to an employer who has treated them very poorly. It is like divorce. How many people ever remarry the same person.
If you know anybody considering embarking on a nursing career, do everything you can to talk them out of it. The government appears to be headed in the direction of continuing to treat them like dirt and trying to import cheap second and third world staff.
From what I can gather nurses in the private sector are paid even less. Nursing homes for the old are concerned about public sector pay rises as their nurses will leave. Just on the aside, heard of a nurse who returned from working in England recently. On receiving her first pay she cried as she new she would get paid less but was not prepared for such a big drop.
Nurses in higher cost areas. IE Auckland and Wellington need to earn more. Nurses in lower cost areas need to earn less. Pay cuts are not possible. So they need to take all the money allocated for the pay rise that the nurses will eventually get and give it only to the nurses in the higher cost areas. Instead of all nurses get extra 10k per year. Nurses in Auckland and Wellington get 30k extra per year. Nurses in Invercargill maybe get CPI 3%.
When essential skills categories have been diluted to the point barista, bottle shop checkout operator and vacuum cleaner are included how can you trust any "essential skills" exclusions when inexperienced students can work in essential skills categories just fine now. The barn door is wide open already and you propose tearing the barn, and any sense of access to housing, down further.
Air NZ would benefit by operating flights to these countries to return these temporary residents, who could not go home due to Covid. Vaccinate them and put them on the extra flights AirNZ and the Government should organise in arrangement with the countries from where these temporary visa holders have come. Even if half the cost is borne by them, it would be good for NZ and its Carrier, right ?
thats all we need another kind of visa to add to the existing variety that dont work very well,coming off their success with the vaccine rollout I am sure the health system would welcome checking 240,000 visa holders.the police too as they could drop what they are doing.peter and july dont seem to have calculated the cost of their virtue signalling but just setting it up never mind implementation would not be cheap.
The authors attach a Te Reo label for added credibility.
I despise the appropriation of Maori culture for the ruling elite to project an image of inclusiveness. It's ultimately disrespectful to Maori who should be standing up against it. My colleague recently did so towards the RBNZ and Adrian Orr using the word kaitiaki to express guardianship in their propaganda. Here's Stuff on RBNZ's appropriation of Maori culture.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/125702129/reserve-bank-governor-adrian…
I agree although equally I have seen far more Maori artists being denied connection and use of their culture by iwi denying them the right to use and publish their artwork and making it enormously difficult to get any project to fruition when valid inclusion and access such as language localisation is needed. Hence the fact many more are left excluded by iwi decisions about ownership and denying artist and translator rights rather than companies actual intentions to be inclusive to allow people to have mana in their language by providing options allowing them to read information and education materials in it. One artist even proclaimed to me directly that the iwi were stealing his culture, his ancestral history and taonga again. Not all people with deep Maori heritage are benefited by the iwi management being tightly nepotistic.
They are already here dummy! They have been here since the borders closed because of Covid and many have been here for decades. So, they will have complied like everyone else, well almost everyone else with the same covid restriction as everyone else.
I kinda understand why your non-de plume is what it is. Onomatopoeia maybe even?
So they have a home country and choose to deny NZders access to housing in their home country. Seems morally more disgusting to claim they are entitled to residency while NZders have to become refugees from their own nation just for adequate medical care and housing. Or do dying kiwi kids not count as valuable enough to you than the people discussed about who are not the decades long residents but the short term often corrupt visa process seekers such as the study to residency seekers more often than not receiving more government support than those born here.
Sorry I politely disagree. The govt giving 6 month extensions is fine. 2024 is too far away - we could be covid ravaged ourselves within 6 months and in economic meltdown. And regarding residency - I would like to see some bold indications by govt of what "skilled" really is in regards their "immigration reset". Yes give drs and other very highly skilled individuals residency - if in queue and meet all other criteria - but we've been duped by this concept of "skilled" for too long.
And btw please don't co-opt "manākitanga" before taking into account the views of the majority of Māori. I think you'll find that manākitanga has limits in this regards.
We're all encouraged to have a go with Te Reo as the authors are here.
Why do you need to consult Maori views before adopting a word from what's an official language of NZ, taught in schools and used widely in government departments the media etc. I didn't realize words were open to interpretation.
If Maori consultation is regularly required for meaning maybe the language should be retained exclusively for Maori to use so the remaining 80% of the population don't get it wrong and cause offense.
I do agree with all your other points.
Sorry if you misread me, I strongly encourage the use of Te Reo by all! In this case though, it's the co-opting of our language to give the author supposedly implicit support from Maori when I am certain that the converse is true. Too often authors pick and choose various kupu from te reo in order to attempt to take some high moral ground - yet are using such to push their agenda.
Te Reo is great. I love the national anthem and that my 4 year old granddaughter counts in Te Reo as easily as English. But the instrumentalism of Te Reo is rife. We use Te Reo words in the same way Victorians used Greek, Latin and French phrases: a means of looking down on those who don't understand. After 20 years I ought to know more than dozen words; if so that's my fault but writing an article about immigration presumably to be read by newcomers and include words you know they will not understand is rude.
Its rife Lapun. Listen to most RNZ articles now and you soon encounter words, phrases, or titles of government departments that are crucial to context of the story yet will be unknown to most kiwis. No translation is given, and by the time you do look it up you have missed the details. I do consider that rude towards the audience and arrogant toward the taxpayers that fund RNZ. All they will achieve is to divide the country.
Aotearoa I have no issue with because of course everyone knows what it means.
'Skilled'. That is how I got in 20 years ago. There is only one definition that works: how much will an employer pay either in salary or work permit costs. All other attempts to decide who is skilled and who isn't fail. They fail for the same reason communist Russia couldn't manage developing an advanced economy and their planners were far brighter and better resourced than our INZ.
My skill was 'IT professional'; the attempts by INZ to define what was a IT skill in demand was an embarrassment.
Covid is giving us a taste of what we will face in 15 or so years without covid. Demographics here and around the world are changing the whole labour dynamic. Many NZ demographers have highlighted this but no one listens. The change we will experience in the next 20 years through age structure along with tech and climate will turn our world upside down. Of course it will be the government of the days fault not our inability to read, think and see what is coming.
It seems to me that most demographers we hear from are petrified of populations falling.
Like many who recognise that the planet is hugely overpopulated with rapacious primates, I welcome a fall in the population rather than running up a bigger Ponzi for a larger collapse a bit later.
I wish these same demographers could view our predicament for what it is. A temporary and unsustainable blowout in our population via drawdown on finite natural resources. We need to accept this fact and manage the way back down very carefully. Expanding the population via immigration will make this more difficult.
This site specialises in intelligent comments about property. That is intelligent which does not mean always correct. I totally concur with your dream of a planned decline in population but if it happened there would eventually be more houses than families and when that happened owners would walk away simply to avoid rates bills. It happened in the Bronx when I lived in NY 40 years ago. If/When it happens the articles published on this website will be very different.
That's a interesting comment, I was wondering if area's in NZ would turn out like that. My house that I'm trying to get back to, has had it rates rise at a alarming rate. I was thinking that anymore rises of the rate will result in more pressure on the owners who will just either stop paying or leave. Is that one of the main reasons people left your area?
Anything is better than our status quo - policy by bureaucratic delay. I can only assume the current policy is 'no immigrants are arriving therefore INZ can close down'. A policy designed by our enemies that will leave us denuded of foreign doctors and over-flowing with foreign kitchen staff.
For what it is worth I say let them stay, they are already here and contributing like the rest of us. But I do agree with slowing future immigrants and sightseers. Not forgetting there are 1m+ NZ residents living overseas of which apparently 30% want to come home.
I've probably written too many "lets reduce the number of immigrants" comments and several "lets have a population policy" comments. But I broadly agree with this article - other than tweaking the extended stay to 2024 to apply to those only who have paid a certain amount of income tax and make it end of 2022 as the default (extended to match ever extending Covid restrictions).
'Let them in' or 'kick them out' - both have their adherents but only INZ has 'lets dither' and that is not hospitality, kindness, generosity or support.
240,000 "Thousand short-term migrants are trapped in New Zealand due to COVID-19."
Not sure I believe that. Look at the customs arrivals departures schedule
60,000 left NZ in July
Doesnt look as though they are trapped too much
Like to see a break down by country of origin
Most of the remainers are still here by choice
I checked your figures.Yes many days in July has two to three times the number of people leaving than arriving.Then I guess a flurry of returnees from Australia for a few weeks but that seems to be over and its back to losing 1000-1500 people a day.
If this keeps going young kiwis should be looking forward to higher wages and more housing options in about four months time.
No one asked the New Zealand people if we wanted the highest immigration rates in the world. Sets a precedent to quietly allow change to the settings again and fix lot of problems.
Maybe Jacinda and her team are a bit smarter than some give her credit.
Interesting times ahead.
so what's up with the numbers then?
here are the mbie stats for miq
Number of people currently in Managed Isolation facilities 3,921
Number of people currently in Quarantine facilities 60
Projected Returnees – Next 14 days 3,380
Total number of people through MIQ facilities since 26 March 2020 160,842
this shows only 8k a month going through
something doesn't add up
interested in others ideas???
No no no.
Many of our current problems are caused by the out of control population explosion of recent.
I agree with the short term extension many temporary visa holders have had. I know a few of them. But while Covid is still with us, there are fewer unknowns, it's no longer a reason folk can't leave. Folk are not trapped.
I have long advocated a stable population policy and this government seems to agree, but not admit it.
They should make their view clear and stop messing people about.
You're not confusing the NZIER with the NZ Initiative are you?
The NZIER have been pretty critical on NZ immigration policy lately.
When the border did re-open, Fry and Wilson’s suggestions for the Government included substantially reducing the flow of people with the same or lower skills than found on average of New Zealand: cutting generous employment rights for fee-paying students; reduce the number of holidaymaker visas; and reviewing the RSE scheme to ensure its humanitarian objectives.
nzs-welcomed-a-lot-of-nice-people-few-trailblazers-through-immigration-nzier
The report's authors Peter Wilson and Julie Fry concluded that rather than only bringing benefits to New Zealand, the country's temporary migration policy might also be having some negative effects in the long term."What we found was there's not actually a lot of good economic evidence about the effect of temporary and seasonal migrants on the host economies, and that's a concern because New Zealand has considerably increased its numbers of temporary migrants over the last 10 years," co-author Peter Wilson told RNZ on Tuesday.
new-report-calls-into-question-benefits-of-recognised-seasonal-employer-scheme
Probably not things business wants to hear.
Having said that, I don't particularly agree with their call here. NZ immigration policy seems to be based on the idea that if you stick around long enough, eventually no-one will have the heart to ask you to leave.
My issue with allowing anyone to live in NZ, is that we need enough houses and infrastructure for those already here. Otherwise we are pushing people out, including our younger generation some who are locked out of every owning a house because of the current mess.
Once there are enough houses etc, then have a planned population increase. Not the mess that has happened over the last 20 years, which has led to NZ now having some of the highest house prices, and a lack of infrastructure and resources. It is going to take many years to play catch up, with the massive population increase NZ has had.
Also what about the principle of hospitality, kindness, generosity, support , when it comes to existing younger generations of NZers who have been completely priced out of the housing market, and maybe renters for life, or have to move overseas to ever buy a good house? We are supposed to be a team of 5 million, which doesn't mean a rapid growing divide in wealth between those that own a house, and those that don't.
IMO companies that are using these lower paid migrants, like rest homes, should be required to build them homes. They build houses for rest home residents and have their own house designers on staff, so they are in an ideal good position to do this. If they were paid the staff rates that nurses normally get working in hospitals, then it would attract local workers. Same goes for farm workers doing manual picking jobs. Yet milkers seem to get paid well. Why do these highly paid CEOs, owners and managers think that people should be working for these low wages. We seem to have a two tier workforce in NZ.
NZ hasn't helped most of it's citizens returning home, MIQ is a joke. To get a spot is virtually impossible. I'm in this situation and many others. Frankly we have been abandoned. It's outright lie that you can get a spot and even if your lucky enough with the small batches that are taken up in 10 seconds, Quarantine would have to coincide with your flights. The authors please actually go out and interview / research MIQ and citizens trying to return and you will quickly find that MIQ spots are like winning the lottery...
Mostly because it is trivially easy for morally bereft skilled people to set up a undetectable-by-the-govt bot to fill in forms and navigate the sites faster than any human or indeed any human with disabilities can. It is not a first come first served queue; that would imply a waitlist. But it is a most able can monopolize and financially benefit on the vulnerability of others process by taking the available spots first. The government designed it that way because they love monopolies, corrupt management practices bereft of scientific practice and hate equitable by need and true accessibility for people. Those with serious medical issues will find it they would die faster than get an MIQ spot without being heavily scammed along the way.
Manaakitanga - My heart breaks. I am a UK mother of an immigrant to you New Zealand. He is a IT consultant with two Kiwi children. The youngest I have not met and have no idea when I will. I have written to your immigration minister, MP for Ohariuthe and the NZ consular to the UK to ask for Tumanako – Hope for my Whānau. I hope you can find kindness in your hearts to respect all humans and respect for immigrants. Yesterday me - today you. Blessings
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