In May last year, New Zealand’s Ardern Government vowed to end low-skilled, wage crushing migration via a “once-in-a generation” reset for New Zealand’s immigration system.
It flagged a significantly smaller migration intake post-Covid focused on highly skilled, highly paid and productive migrants that fill genuine skills shortages. This meant abolishing the current low-skilled system, which allows businesses “to rely on lower-skilled labour and suppress wages rather than investing capital in productivity-enhancing plant and machinery, or employing and upskilling New Zealanders into work”.
Toward the end of last year, the Ardern Government began backsliding on its commitment. It announced that 165,000 permanent residency visas (representing 3.3% of New Zealand’s population) would be handed out like tic tacs, which resulted in a record number of residency visas.
