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MIGRATION IS VITAL FOR NZ By Lawrence Johnston EMIGRATION is vital for New Zealand and especially at this time as most of the country's employers struggle to fill skilled vacancies.Moderate, sustainable and well-managed immigration was essential to New Zealand's future. This was the strong message given out by new Minister for Immigration, David Cunliffe. At the heart of this policy would be an increased focus on skilled migration. "We must ensure that we are clear about the skills we need, and that we choose the best available applicants to meet New Zealand's Labour needs. "We need to consider how to get the best possible match between the flow of skilled migrants and the labour needs of our country," he said. Skill and labour shortages were the critical issues now being identified by New Zealand businesses. These shortages had left more than half New Zealand companies facing a major crisis. The constraint that this was putting on them would be the main focus of the new Government's immigration policy. Mr Cunliffe warned that for the first time in more than two decades, New Zealand had too many jobs and not enough people. "We live in a country where 56 per cent of our firms tell us that they face a major crisis." That skills shortage crisis was a major barrier to growth. "One in three firms tell us that a shortage of skilled people is their number one problem," he said. Training New Zealanders was one answer and it would always be a priority for the Government. But clearly immigration was also required as a secondary lever. Current immigration policy was designed to attract the skilled migrants, tourists and students who could make a contribution to society and to the economy. New Zealand needed the best talent the world had to offer, but it was in a global race competing on the world stage for the best international talent. Mr Cunliffe said he was committed to building on the existing framework to ensure that New Zealand was an attractive destination for skilled migrants. The skilled migrant category was the "flagship" of the Government's immigration policy and it had to work effectively, he said. To win its share of the talent around, New Zealand had to see migration as an end-to-end process that began with marketing and didn't end till the migrant was settled, working and productive in New Zealand, Mr Cunliffe said. Mr Cunliffe said that in the past, immigration policy had been a "political football." Some politicians had used the occasional example of bad behaviour or undesirable background among migrant New Zealanders to damn not only those migrants themselves but by association their entire communities. They had said some New Zealanders were not "mainstream", and had used such cases to divide New Zealanders from each other. The politics of division had to stop. It was time to rebuild a community-wide consensus that migration, when well managed and at a sustainable level, was a "must-have" for New Zealand. To think otherwise was an "economic no-brainer" for a rapidly developing country with the world's lowest unemployment, Mr Cunliffe said. |
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