Time For A Population Policy

In April 2022, the Productivity Commission released it’s final report in to how our immigration system might be better structured in to the future. The report (if you haven’t read it) is an interesting insight in to how immigration in NZ has been managed historically and provides a broad outline of how we might seek to use it in the future. Within the report, one of the key recommendations is that the Government of the day sets out a Government Policy Statement (GPS) which would hopefully provide a clear outline of the direction and purpose of our immigration system, giving all stakeholders a better understanding of the desired outcomes. This GPS would help to address some of the key issues mentioned in the report, many of which come back to a lack of connection between immigration and other Government policy objectives.

A good idea in many ways, but arguably it may not go far enough. It is a few shades away (maybe a few too many) from a formal population policy which would work in similar ways but cover a much broader range of key related areas - and maybe that is what we need. One of the criticisms of previous immigration systems, raised several times in the Productivity Commission’s report, is the lack of long-term planning within immigration and a significant chasm between immigration settings and all the areas it touches (and there are quite a few).

Governments (no matter which side) have historically used immigration much like a bath plug, filling up or draining out depending on immediate or near-term needs. The mechanisms used are often slow to react, require too much input or simply don’t reflect the real world. Policy settings for different Visas are tweaked and adjusted to meet current issues or demands but rarely are they designed with a long-term goal in mind. A good example of this is the one-off 2021 Resident Visa category announced in September of 2021. A clue is in the name “one-off”, because it will most likely never be repeated. It was designed to fix a problem with backlogs and to also assist in giving certainty to the non-resident labour force in NZ during the pandemic, but has resulted in a record-breaking 200,000 people (and climbing) being granted Residence over the next 12 to 18 months. That is more than any other Residence program has offered in a very very long time and more than was initially forecasted (at 165,000).

The flow on effects of a policy like the 2021 Resident Visa are now starting to surface - increased demand for teachers and education services, there will be increased demand on healthcare, infrastructure, housing and so on. Much of this will be absorbed relatively quickly as these people have been in NZ for some time, yet a good portion of them (the partners and children) are only just arriving and will continue to flow in as applications are approved.

Pre-Covid and leading up to 2019, the New Zealand economy benefited greatly from a steady supply of temporary labour, many of which have gone on to secure Residence through the above 2021 Resident Visa program - however if you can imagine for a minute that the pandemic never happened (I think we have all done that a few times), there was a huge number of people here on those temporary Visas (in the hundreds of thousands), stuck in lengthy processing queues of two or more years. Our immigraiton policy settings for temporary Visas (which were being dished out to meet demand in a booming economy) were largely separated from our Residence program objectives, which many migrants were keen to pursue. Again the immigration process was used to react to clear and present danger, without a lot of thought for the consequences.

There are plenty of examples of this, including the Student Visa debacle where Ministers were advised that the balooning number of international Students all potentially eligible to apply for Residence had to be dealt with, leading to a change in Skilled Migrant Category rules, essentially culling the herd. For years, the education sector had benefited from a temporary Visa policy that enticed many young foreign nationals to come and study here with the promise of a Work Visa at the end of it. It was often the Work Visa that was the goal along withe dream of Residece, not the completion of a course of study. It did however pump billions of dollars into our export education sector.

I suspect that without a longer-term and broader plan as to our population goals, we will continue to see immigration being used as the bath-plug approach for years to come. A population policy would potentially give us a better framework to deliver a more consistent immigration system, one that has a long-term goal with short term adaptability. A population policy, as opposed to a policy statment specifically for immigration, would encompass a far wider range of population issues and pull together many more of the factors that immigration has such an impact on.

It would also serve to give our immigration system some additional certainty, which for migrants (and our ability to attract them) is crucial. I have written about the competition for global talent previously and it is clear that New Zealand has dropped the ball on this with our recent immigration settings. Our border closure was necessary to some degree but it has taken too long to provide a clear path to the market that we are indeed open for business (and we are now finally open for business). Within that period of border closures, immigration settings were tweaked so often that it was hard to keep up with the inbox pinging relentlessy with new policy updates. Of course no one designs immigration policies for a pandemic, but the ease and speed at which changes were made, as well as the introduction of the 2021 Resident Visa demonstrate how reactionary it all is. Finally when we decided it was time to open up and bring in the skills we need, the great “rebalance” that was announced, yielded little more than some previous policy under a different name. Policy on the fly seems to have become the norm, but as we emerge from this pandemic, there has never been a better time to start thinking much longer term.

Having assisted thousands of people over the years to make the move, there are several things that stand out in terms of what attracts them to New Zealand and apart from Hobbits, the relative safety and opportunities (particularly for their children), the biggest fear most migrants have when taking the leap is certainty. Knowing that if you start the process to migrate you will get there (eventually). Without a cohesive, long-term thinking approach to what we want our immigration settings to achieve, it is hard to create a system that offers that certainty - whereas other countries will be able to deliver that.

Of course creating a population policy is an enormous undertaking and encompasses a much wider range of issues than just immigration but it all has to start somewhere. I also believe that it would allow the Government and its various administration to move away from thinking of migrants as commodities and to see the longer term benefits that migrants can bring. A family of four who chose to move here, and are supported in that process with clarity and certainty, bring their skills and the future skills of their children - a win in the longer term.

It remains to be seen how much of the Productivity Commission’s report will be adopted by the current administration but I certainly hope that the resounding message of creating a more connected and consistent system which delivers better and more timely outcomes for migrants and New Zealand will be amongst the first things. Perhaps we can tackle the population policy shortly after that…