Think Big(ger) New Zealand

The concept of skilled migration is a pretty broad thing, if you stop and think about it. Migrants bring value in so many different ways and trying to work out who and who not to let in, is no easy task - however it seems that for many countries around the world, it has become all too easy to focus on the job offer as the answer to that most perplexing puzzle.

The question I have, is whether having that single main measure of a migrants value is the right one or are we thinking too small.

Most of the policy settings we have in New Zealand at present, at least for our Skilled Migrant group, are based on historical settings, that have evolved over time to rely almost entirely on an applicant’s ability to secure employment. Of course we have other criteria such as health, character, English and age, but ultimately at the core of any successful application lies the job.

For many reasons that makes sense, because securing a job offer demonstrate that a migrant can add economic value relatively quickly. It also means we are solving skill shortages and assisting employers to be more productive. On the face of it, employment appears to be a pretty good measure of skills, however it is also incredibly problematic, particularly when you start to separate how migrants qualify, based on that employment.

Insisting that applicants secure jobs upfront also means that we may be missing out on really good candidates who can add value in to the future, but may not be ready for the market right now. The job offer as a key to success in the visa process has also lead policy makers to seeing migrants as commodities, essentially adjusting the flow of numbers based on political whims, which doesn’t build a strong future-proof immigration system.

Could we do this differently? Could we go back to having a mix of employment based pathways and those that recognise skills and value, without the job offer in place (we have been there before). I think we can and I think New Zealand could start thinking a bit bigger on that score, moving away from just sticking with the status quo or following the crowd.

The Focus On Jobs

We currently have a variety of pathways for skilled applicants to navigate that will lead to the grant of residence, all of which are based on the applicant securing work in a particular occupation or with a particular salary or a combination of both. However within these different pathways, we also seem to assign value to those specific occupations that then determines the speed at which residence can be secured, and by default the level of risk an applicant has to assume.

Remember that migrants generally move to secure a better, more certain future and more often than not, they are doing so because the opportunities they have in their home country are limited or there are other more pressing factors pushing them to make a change. For most migrants certainty in all of this is the key concern, because if you make the move, you want to make it permanently.

Our Visa system seems to miss this point, because we have some pathways that allow applicants to secure Residence very quickly and others that require a migrant to work here for between one and three years first. How we decide on this is supposed to be based on some form of “demand” gauge, that I suspect no Government official could accurately explain.

One Single Target

Having a visa system with one single target for migrants to hit, means we may be losing out on some of the best and brightest talent.

For example, if you are a Secondary School Teacher and meet specific requirements, and have a job offer here, you are able to apply directly for Residence. Once approved you are free to do as you wish, which includes not having to to work in that occupation at all.

However if you are a primary, intermediate or early childhood teacher you can qualify for Residence after one or two years of working in New Zealand in that occupation. Both types of teachers appear on our Green List and both types would be eligible under the points pathway, yet we seem to separate them out for some rather strange reason.

The Government would argue that we have a greater demand for Secondary School teachers right now, and so we add a greater incentive, yet demand changes constantly and what we need today, we may not need tomorrow. Our Green List does not change as consistently as the labour market does and as a good example of that we still have a wide range of construction roles available, yet that sector is struggling at present - jobs are still available of course, but nowhere near as many as when the Green List was first rolled out.

Having employment as a key driver for our immigration process means we focus on a much more immediate set of needs and even then how immediate they are is based on the time it takes for Governments and public officials to change and update the various lists. Even with a list that updated more regularly we are not necessarily considering whether migrants who could be of enormous value long-term might not want to work their way towards the end goal for Residence.

Missed Opportunities

The competition for good quality migrant talent is persistent and no matter what the economic or more specifically the labour market situation might look like, there are top-tier countries (NZ, Australia and Canada to name a few) that are constantly competing for the best and brightest talent. How we do all of that is often quite different although we do tend to follow a lot of the same systems and processes.

We Are Competing

New Zealand needs to remember that we are competing for global talent and to remain competitive in that race, we need to adapt and think differently.

One key difference that New Zealand seems to have become stuck on is the job offer and its role in all skilled migrant category applications and yet this wasn’t always the case.

Our previous versions of the skilled migrant pathway offered applicants without a job offer the ability to secure residence, based primarily on an assessment of their skill (qualifications and work experience) and their potential for employment. This meant that people who could prove that they were likely to secure work could secure visas, without having that job offer in hand. This system sat comfortably alongside the process for those who did have job offers.

I am not necessarily suggesting that we go back to that model, because it had its flaws, but the concept of recognising skills and value, beyond just the immediate benefits that a job might bring is definitely worth considering. If we want the brightest and best, we have to be able to offer them something that provides less certainty and more flexibility.

For many of those highly skilled individuals, the options are pretty extensive, and so we have to be in that race or just concede that its not for us. I think we should be in the race, given we are a small country at the bottom of the planet and having access to skills that can grow our economy is pretty important.

We have toyed with the idea of “Global Impact Visas” or “Innovation Visas” which aim to attract those tech superstars, but actually we could extend this out a lot further. We need to consider how we attract migrants that will add value now, as well as in the longer-term and how we build capacity, rather than just plugging gaps.

Think Bigger

The problem with changing the status quo is that it takes a lot of political willpower or just a very brave soul to achieve it. Right now the current Minister, Erica Stanford is busy fighting fires, most of which were set by policies rolled out by the previous Government. An influx of lower skilled migrants, a struggling AEWV policy and a set of visa categories set up primarily in reaction to industry lobby groups. Trying to reign that in is no small task.

Thinking Ahead

We have an opportunity to stand out from the crowd. We need to think less about migrants as a short-term commodity and more about their longer-term value.

In all of that fire fighting however is a very real opportunity - for New Zealand to be big, bold and very brave. To do things differently and to set ourselves up to attract the best and the brightest now and in to the longer term.

Securing a job offer would still be a part of our migration offering but it would be one part, amongst a range of other policies designed to attract the people we need over the long-haul. If I was to offer the Minister some suggestions they would be along the following lines:

• Abandon the arbitrary and often plain silly adherence to the median wage assessment. You can keep some sort of minimum in place, but having case officers pick apart applications based on an hourly rate for people earning significantly good salaries is just nonsense. Skill is measured by more than just the amount paid per hour.

• Get rid of the absurd one, two or three year work experience requirement in New Zealand. If an applicant is skilled, they are skilled and if they are employable and adding value, there is little to no sense in making them wait around.

• Open up a “no-job” but “highly skilled” pathway for those looking to make the move, who are employable, can integrate and can demonstrate how they would bring that value. I am not talking about the migrant unicorns here, but instead to a much wider pool of high caliber applicants.

• Resist the temptation to be swayed by all and any lobby groups and carving out unique policies based on how loudly they might be able to shout.

• Clearly define the separation between temporary visas and residence - for a long time we have let this slide and we have pathways to Residence for some, based on securing work visas, some work visas that never secure residence and so forth. Instead we have mechanisms that could allow people to secure Residence (and certainty) with conditions that require them to remain in employment for a period of time. We could rethink how work visas and residence co-exist, to make it much clearer that temporary visas are in fact just that - temporary.

There is a lot more I could offer and a lot more detail to add, but my message here is that we need to think bigger in terms of what we want our migration system to achieve and we need to go beyond just the “here and now”. We need a system that can react to more immediate market conditions of course, but also one that builds in capacity and recognises that the skills we bring in today, will potentially add value for many more years to come.

A system that offers more than just a job offer pathway, that aims to attract the best, the brightest and the most talented people to help us build and grow this great little country.

Until next week!