The NZ political realities of immigration post pandemic

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Migrant workers inside NZ desperate for inclusion in wage subsides and welfare (plus those unlucky enough to be outside the country when the borders closed) are begging and begging and begging and begging for kindness but with so many domestic NZers not feeling safe, the Government will want to avoid the possible voting backlash of helping migrant workers when domestic voters themselves are vulnerable.

To date, immigration to NZ has been exploitative and speculative. The Key Government opened the floodgates to immigration to prop up the speculative housing bubble and with massive downgrades in labour officers to police bad bosses, exploitation of migrant workers in NZ is a pandemic in of itself.

This exploitation pushes down wages for domestic workers while also forcing those domestic workers to compete for low cost housing with new migrant workers.

In 2018 we had 129 000 migrants for a population of almost 5 million.

Australia with 24 and a half million, allows in 190 000.

You can see the immediate difference when comparing NZ with Australia.

On top of that we have over 300 000 international students and workers with temporary work visas who have been obscenely exploited by a de-unionised job market and additional to that, we had almost 4 million tourists visiting us each year.

Meanwhile more of our assets and land are being owned by overseas interests.

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It is no wonder that our social and physical infrastructure is groaning under unsustainable gridlock while creating political friction.

Rethink immigration:

Migrant Worker Amnesty:

We can’t entice migrant workers here, have them exploited by unscrupulous bosses and then tell them to piss off back home. That is cruel and nasty. We should offer an immediate amnesty to all migrant workers in NZ to become permanent residents BUT right after that amnesty, we must close all immigration until a vaccine is widely available. Employers will need to use the existing work force here if they want to expand, this would end the bullshit games of companies claiming no NZer wants to be a burger king manager or booze seller so we need to import those workers. You either pay proper wages to attract someone to your job or you don’t get an employee. Those migrant workers who left NZ as the borders closed however are not due any special protection or aid, they are simply the unlucky and a Government isn’t responsible for unlucky foreign workers.

Universal Union Membership for all migrant workers:

The ease with which exploitation of migrant workers is so rampant throughout NZ demands a response that is serious and only compulsory Union membership of all migrant workers will force the exploitation to end.

High Tech Migration:

Seeing as most of the planet will shut down and stay shut down to international tourism until a vaccine is available, you will only be focused on high end tourism who can afford the 2 weeks, backpackers and freedom campers are gone. We must also be open to tech companies wanting to relocate their head offices here so that people can live openly in a plague free environment which will quickly become our international selling point.

Homecoming:

We also need to be prepared for a mass homecoming of the Kiwi diaspora who are feeling the pinch in Australia and Europe, who are looking at NZs distance as its saving grace now. We should reach out to them and say ‘there’s never been a better time to return Home’ campaigns and bring their expertise and skill sets back to NZ to help generate the next wave of Kiwi entrepreneurs we require to kick start the economy again in the new realty.

Our migration will surge from returning citizens and permanent residents making the needs of migrant workers even less likely to be heard or supported.

 

There are enormous structural changes coming our way in a post pandemic world and we need to see ourselves as one of the life boats on a climate crisis planet. Immigration is an area we need to urgently reform so that when external shocks occur, we are flexible enough to sustain them.

This pandemic hasn’t ended and it won’t end until there is a vaccine available.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. NZ needs to urgently stop the Ponzi, and the benefit transfers to new residents. Most of whom come and go from NZ cherry picking welfare here once they easily get the NZ citizenship and permanent residency which tends to be a year of a flaky diploma followed by a retail “manager’ type job … Have kids, get the aged parents in to look after them while drawing a pension etc…

    The temp pemits themselves only take 10 days to obtain but due to how popular it is to get into NZ now the immigration phones are ringing off the hook and it takes months to get in on the scams which the media frequently is complaining about as we need to get migrant bums on seats faster, who cares about the fraudsters coming!

    I know of babies that got NZ citizenship but are being ferried around the world mostly between China and NZ to get free kindy, learn English, get free health care and so forth under the Chinese grandparents who live in China and come back and forth to NZ on the back of looking after the child. Where are the parents you might ask? Well they got the free NZ education off the back of migrant parents who are now on NZ pensions while bizarrely never having having to work in NZ or learn English.

    The adult kids are working in China and around the world but making use of NZ benefits to the next generation of migrant kids, while not paying any taxes here!

    That is not migration, that is multi generational free loading and it’s time to stop it.

    As you can see by these people who managed to get NZ permanent residency after not putting in a tax return in NZ, ever… it is remarkably easy to contribute nothing to NZ or be harming NZ by bringing in drugs, but still get citizenship fre and it’s been happening for decades now. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11842563

    “Yim was sentenced this month in the High Court at Auckland to 11 and a half years in prison for possession of a class A drug for supply.

    According to Inland Revenue records neither Yim nor Wu, who arrived in New Zealand in 1991 and 1994, have ever declared their income nor paid any tax.

    Yim, who came to New Zealand from Hong Kong on a resident visa before gaining citizenship in 1995, has previously been convicted on three unrelated charges.

    In July 2006 he was convicted at the Auckland District Court for drink-driving and on a dangerous driving charge, while in April 1997 he was convicted of shoplifting.”

    (AKA NZ is so pathetic that even with no taxes paid, being convicted in NZ of crimes, somehow these drug dealers managed to operated massive drugs scams in NZ and get NZ citizenship, Sroubek another example!)

    Flakey diplomas bring the bright to NZ (sarcasm) in operation…

    Lovepreet Brar arrived in New Zealand from the Punjab on 13 November 2010, less than a month after his 18th birthday. He enrolled in a management diploma at ICL Graduate Business School for 1 one year diploma.

    The main attraction was what came with the education: the opportunity to work while studying, and a path to residency on the other side.

    Brar had one singular objective through all this: New Zealand residency. To become eligible he needed to tick a number of boxes, including English proficiency, a tertiary qualification, and a level of income – as well as a managerial title. So when his former boss at Layaway Depot contacted him to ask why he’d left, he levelled with him about what he needed for his ultimate goal. By the week’s end Brar was a store manager at Layaway Depot Otāhuhu.

    “I applied for my residency and I got my residency sorted in three months.”

    After a few years he got a job AA at Meadowlands in east Auckland and was the go-between for applicants willing to pay bribes to corrupt testing officers.

    He liked the work, and his colleagues. “I was the only Indian guy there,” he says, “but there were testing officers too.” They were older and employed by Vehicle Testing NZ (VTNZ), but worked out of the AA offices and shared staff facilities. Brar became friendly with a pair of testing officers, Vinesh Kumar and Mohammed Feroz, often having lunch with them.

    One day he pulled into work when he saw a friend outside the office. The friend told him he’d just passed his driver licensing test, and Brar congratulated him on the achievement.

    “Bro, do you know it’s so easy to get a licence here?” his friend asked. “I paid $80 to the testing officer and he just gave me a licence – even though I did so many mistakes.”

    The scheme Brar had stumbled upon was run by Kumar and Feroz, who would pass those who had failed their tests in exchange for bribes. The pair suggested Brar join them as a sales funnel. Brar says he agonised, but was eventually persuaded. “I know it was my fault. I should not have been convinced, I should not have got involved,” he says. “It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

    “It was a mistake that made him a lot of money. In less than two years he received over $56,000 into his bank accounts, spread over 107 transactions. He says the amount he retained was less, but it’s also true that many applicants paid in cash. Police are still unsure of either the total number of licences issued, or the amount of money the scheme netted those involved, but a police source close to the investigation believes it was likely more than $100,000.”

    https://thespinoff.co.nz/music/02-07-2019/the-extraordinary-story-of-love-brar-the-fraudster-who-became-a-pop-star/

  2. Other policy changes the government needs to make

    NZ also urgently needs to make the NZ STATE pension needing 32.5 years of NZ residency to receive it, aka half a life time of living here to qualify for a STATE pension. Everyone else has Kiwisaver and those coming to NZ as migrant pensioners or soon to be pensioners, need to prove they have enough assets and money to provide for themselves before coming here.

    At the same time, to clean up NZ’s free for all scams, the government needs to stop people in relationships being able to give NZ citizenship to their short term partners. Instead there should be a permit where the relationship has to last for 10 years and be beneficial to NZ (aka if the spouse is a loser who beats up their partner or commits crimes they are sent packing and if the Kiwi loves them so much, they can go after them to their own country) to get NZ citizenship… Some people are trying for their third wife to come into NZ and get NZ residency it’s a scam and even if it isn’t the relationships break up quickly leaving big messes for the NZ family courts and justice systems in NZ… Migrant Pensioners are now even bringing in migrant love interests in they met on the internet over. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/376220/10k-11-days-and-one-failed-deportation

    Tourists and migrants coming to NZ from overseas should be required to have medical insurance and pay an ACC premium before they are allowed into NZ, and it activates every time they fly in and out.

    As there are no longer any jobs in NZ, time to ask those who are on temp visas to go home. And not allow anybody back until things improve in NZ as the main task should be to stimulate employers in NZ to un and under employed NZ citizens and NZ’s unemployed wind rush generation.

    In addition if things do improve, any employer who sponsors in an overseas employee should have to pay a bond of $50k and that is held so if the job disappears or the migrant is exploited in NZ, the $50k is used to get the migrant back home and legal fees for doing so! Funny enough a lot about migrant exploitation from the woke, but zero interest in making the employer pay a bond to protect both the worker and NZ taxpayers interests!

    Funny enough you’ll find that fast food, hospitality, low wage employees start employing NZ students, older people and part time workers again that they presently shun. Now many Kiwis are becoming poorer and itinerant in their own countries due to being discriminated against …

    NZ has real social issues going forward because there are so many local people now un and underemployed it creates a dysfunctional society of people who are either on the scrap heap with years left before they receive the pension, or youth and middle aged who have no real life experiences or life skills, but are now having kids, getting into dysfunctional relationships, more drugs and alcohol to fill the void, kids being bought up within that and so forth…

    • +100 saveNZ….very well said!

      Recently I signed a petition organised by young Maori who want housing

      It is an absolute disgrace that under the nine years of jonkey NACT government young New Zealanders both Maori and Pakeha were denied their birthright to buy a house in their own country….many of them are now considering not having children because they can not provide a house for their families

      …all empty houses owned by overseas people must be severely taxed so they release them back on to the New Zealand market ( this has been done in Canada and Australia I think)….we can not and must not have empty houses while our own people are homeless

      China and India have an excess of 70 million males….this is their misogynist problem not ours!

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-men/

      https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/global-0

      We must curtail education and immigration from certain countries , particularly males…or there will be dire consequences for New Zealand’s relatively egalitarian culture and New Zealand women and girls….as well as New Zealand males…as regards opportunity in their own country !

  3. We seem to be attracting the worst of the worst to settle in NZ!
    Double murderer Kamal Reddy to be deported to Fiji after serving sentence
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300024829/double-murderer-kamal-reddy-to-be-deported-to-fiji-after-serving-sentence

    Ummmm so if you commit a crime within 5 years you MAY be deported… well we all know that nobody is being deported from NZ in time to save further crimes being committed by them… the guy above, had drink driving charges… if he had been deported earlier, who knows, his wife and child might still be alive.

    Time to remove the right to easy residence class visas in NZ! And also have anybody who gets a visa is automatically deported for any crime to send a zero tolerance message … and the right to be deported as of right, should last a life time for any migrant committing a crime punishable by prison.

    We might then, have enough social welfare left to actually spend on NZ’s own offenders who join the long, long queues in NZ’s growing criminal justice system and laughable rehabilitation schemes, https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/352047/i-did-ridiculous-things-with-the-money-ministry-fraudster

  4. Example of migrant entitlement when finding out they can’t get residency freebies for their 86 year old mother who is

    “luckily stuck” in Auckland because she was visiting when the lockdown happened”

    “It’s simply not got good enough. It’s a betrayal of its citizens, and elder abuse. People’s lives are in suspended limbo creating extreme stress, and more candidates eliminated, apart from natural attrition, through possible job loss of the sponsoring child.”

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/417993/immigration-category-s-planned-return-scuttled-by-covid-19

    Elder abuse, Yeah, nah. Should have thought of that before leaving their parents in the first place. Expecting aged parents to travel and migrate at 86 is ridiculous and more the elder abuse they are whining about.

    Also telling is that the migrants are not whining because they can’t see their parents (who are actually in NZ, anyway) but whining because they want the residency stamp for their parents, to make sure that NZ tax payers pay for their parents care here so they need to get them residency to do that.

    A pension residency stamp means the NZ taxpayers pay for their migrants family members if they fall sick or need a rest home! Oh and probably get a NZ pension/gold card/winter energy payments too. It’s nothing about visiting, which family members are welcome to do in NZ as tourists here!

    https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/315435/migrants'-parents-cost-nz-'tens-of-millionshttp://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1110/S00572/grey-power-warns-of-impact-of-high-immigration-rates.htm

  5. My last thoughts related to this topic is that the government urgently need to allow people receiving benefits to have part time untaxed or low taxed work. Allow anyone receiving benefits like student allowance, jobseeker, DPB etc need to be able to earn up to minimum wage tax free (or taxed at the same rate as minimum wages)… it is crazy to stop people from trying to work.

    I know so many people that would benefit from part time work in term of their life skills, mental health, parenting skills etc… at the moment all the incentives are against people in NZ actually working! I’m not talking about full time work here, just something to give them extra money to reintroduce them into the work force.

    When people start work, they are often not good at it… that is why you start them young and with part time work on low wages so by the time they are in their mid 20’s they have amassed some life skills, like punctuality and responsibility and with their trade or degree qualification actually are worth higher wages they expect, because they have worked in the past and have soft skills with the new qualifications.

    If people have no job or poor work experiences by 25 then the outcomes for them are probably not good going forward for their lives even if they get a degree. These people can be impractical, entitled and unrealistic and that is where some of the discourse against youth workers is coming from. This is made worse because instead of rising, wages are falling!

    Working crap jobs is a right of passage and it should be used like that because when Kiwis did those crap jobs in horticulture and fast food as students, they were known as fantastic workers all around the world by the time they did other higher paid work.

    Neoliberalism has changed both the NZ work ethic and the NZ internal work discourses where now locals are considered drugged out and lazy… and we all know where the precursor drugs are coming from to get people hooked on drugs to make them drugged out, and who it is benefiting, and it is not NZ, society, the Pacific or the people who live in it.

  6. “You either pay proper wages to attract someone to your job or you don’t get an employee.”

    That’s not how it works. Management and CEO class get to claim remuneration parity with New York, Singapore and the City of London. All others have parity with the cheapest labour markets of developing economies.

    That’s the natural order.

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