New Zealand has a system of migrant labour exploitation by design

Will NZ First and Act be able to run an anti-immigrant campaign this year as they seem to be planning with their recent immigration policy announcements?

I am hopeful they will not. One reason is a fact from a recent NZ Treasury funded study which found that:

“In aggregate, the foreign-born are becoming increasingly important for the country’s tax base. Foreign-born people made up 24% of the population in 2000, also paying 24% of individual tax on market income. Since then, the foreign-born’s share of the population has grown, and their share of tax paid has grown even faster. In the tax year ending March 2024, the foreign-born made up 32% of the population, and paid 38% of the tax.”

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This number is one of the highest percentages in the advanced capitalist world.

The reason for this is simple. Since the mid-1990s, a major wage gap with Australia has grown continuously. This was a consequence of the reactionary neoliberal policies adopted at that time. These policies included severe anti-union laws that radically reduced union membership and coverage inducing significant real wage declines. As a consequence nearly one percent of New Zealanders have migrated to Australia each year for a better life.  Around 25% of the New Zealand-born population now lives abroad – with over half of them in Australia.

To compensate for that loss overseas – averaging about 30-40,000 a year – the government boosted the use of imported labour on temporary work visas and gave residency to around 40,000 a year. Work visas being issued also averaged about 40,000 a year until the early 2000s when they began a radical increase. Prior to Covid hitting in 2019, the work visa numbers had exploded six-fold to 240,000 a year. Student visa numbers also doubled to over 80,000 a year.

Boosting migration numbers also contributed to giving the economy a boost when governments felt they needed it. But the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) boost was always less in per capita terms when the population was taken into account. From 1990 to late 2024, GDP grew by a factor of 2.7, but per capita growth only rose by 1.7.

When Covid hit it meant over 300,000 people were here on temporary visas. Some had been here for a decade or more with no hope of transitioning to Permanent Residence. It was a system of migrant labour exploitation deliberately engineered by successive governments.

Unite Union and the Green Party launched a campaign for permanent residency for all those trapped in the country. A bit to my surprise, the then Labour Party Immigration Minister Michael Woods granted residency in September 2021 to over 200,000 workers and their families who had worked at least three years in the country. This was a fantastic victory for workers rights. The Labour Party almost seemed like it wanted to keep this policy change quiet. Nobody really noticed the change because everyone was already here working with homes and families. Michael Wood lost his seat in Parliament the next election, in part because many migrants in his heavily-migrant populated electorate switched to National or Act.

I didn’t believe that that system which took over two decades to build up would be able to be recreated so easily post-Covid. But I was very wrong.

As of March 31, 2026, over 188,000 Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) have been approved since the scheme opened in 2022. In 2025 alone, over 45,000 working holiday applications were decided, with a 98% approval rate. In 2025, over 18,000 Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) applications were decided. That’s back to over the 240,00 a year total pre-Covid.

Permanent Residence visa numbers are back to 40-50,000 a year which only compensates for the permanent loss each year which means we are recreating a system of migrant labour exploitation for those here on temporary visas with no hope of transitioning to permanent residency.