Govt Uses Covid to Enact Wider Anti-Immigration Reform

[Forsher]

(while also making it easier for the rich to immigrate)

Immigration settings will be very different when the border reopens, the government announced last night. In a speech actually delivered by minister Stuart Nash (immigration minister Kris Faafoi was sick) the government told businesses to prepare to employ far fewer migrant workers, and far more locals. Political editor Justin Giovannetti reported in our live updates that it follows plenty of other signals in this direction from the government. Here’s a set of key paragraphs about the proposed changes, and what they signify:

In recent weeks the Labour government has said that immigrants have been responsible for driving down wages and pressures on the country’s infrastructure and housing. Tonight, Nash made it clear that the high levels of migration seen in recent years is no longer welcome.

“When our borders fully open again, we can’t afford to simply turn on the tap to the previous immigration settings. That path is a continuation of pressures on our infrastructure … and downward pressure on wages. Since the borders closed, we’ve seen a reversal in the horticulture sector, for example, where there’s been a lift in wages to bring in local workers,” said Nash.

Nearly 5% of the country’s workers are on temporary visas, by far the highest level in the OECD. Thousands of those workers, including many in the healthcare sector, haven’t been able to bring their families into the country over the past year because of Covid-19 restrictions. In a sign of what’s to come, Nash said that won’t change. The government is instead creating a new exemption for foreign businesspeople who want to come here to negotiate deals in-person.

The speech was more about a direction of travel than a set of hard numbers to work with. But even within that, some observers were left confused at that lack of detail, reports the NZ Herald. As Stuff reports, there was no further clarity on either how quickly the direction would be implemented, or whether more resources would go to the under-pressure Immigration NZ – the latter question will be answered on Budget Day. Politik (paywalled) reported that some observers were left wondering where the “Kiwis first” workforce was actually going to come from. On The Spinoff, Bernard Hickey argued that a lack of migration planning generally has contributed to the infrastructure and housing deficit New Zealand now faces.

And finally, the numbers that give context for the policy reset: Radio NZ reports that immigration – in terms of people from overseas countries coming to live here – basically stopped over the last year. The net migration gain for the country last year was about 6k people – the year before it was more than 90k.

So... thoughts NSG? Is it appropriate for governments to use global pandemics to fundamentally overhaul immigration settings outside the context of pandemic restrictions? Should governments be enacting trickle down immigration policies ever? Does this reframe how you think about NZ?

I think this is disgusting. It's bad policy being made by bad actors and defended by people for no apparent reason. If you want details of why I think these things:

Look, this might not happen... the current government has a track record of incompetence on a truly mind boggling scale (honestly, the only thing it's mostly got right is Covid) and it's a meme that they make announcements of announcements, which this is in many ways. But, they have been using Covid to do some other major, radical even, policy changes as well, e.g. folding the DHBs into a single national health entity (not like the NHS, which, in any case, is a series of trusts probably not that dissimilar to the DHB system). And this has been a long-time coming. Before Covid and before the Mosque Attacks, Jacinda Ardern was "Meet New Zealand's Justin Trudeau—except she's more like Trump on immigration", so when Bernard Hickey says:

Ardern inherited Andrew Little’s quite tough migration policy, but didn’t implement it, or more accurately, former immigration minister Iain Lees Galloway couldn’t implement it without her support. She has always been a lukewarm supporter of the restrictive approach. Now we will see how serious Labour is about tightening the settings and dealing with the problems detailed above.

I don't believe it, not for a minute. Ardern was framed as an means of rebranding away from Little and Labour's 2007 campaign. Not changing any of that was a choice she and her Labour Party made. Opposition to immigration (and wildly oscillating ideas of what's "kind") are On Brand for Ardern. Similarly, Ardern protected, time and time again, Phil Twyford, who prior to his enormous cock ups in government was best known for deciding everyone with a Chinese sounding name was a foreigner and, therefore, the bane of NZ's existence. Ardern's response was a giant "what scandal?". So, when Hickey writes:

Both sides of politics have accidentally-on-purpose pursued a high population growth, high migration, and low infrastructure approach to growing the economy over the last two decades. We never really debated this and the refusal by ratepayers and councils to help build infrastructure is a de facto rejection of the policy.

It was the perfect match for bringing the government’s own budget back into surplus because all the benefits of higher wages and spending went straight to the bottom line through higher income and GST taxes, without the heavy cost of infrastructure investment. It also allowed governments to say they were growing the economy, albeit by having more people working harder, rather than through productivity and growing real wages from work.

what I think of is "more blame shifting". They've tried to blame the Reserve Bank, they banned foreign ownership as soon as they entered government, they closed the borders as soon as they had an excuse (albeit a good one) but have been a bit sketchy on which countries have had the borders closed and when, and finally they're back to where they started and what got them elected the first time (in other news: Government accused of running MIQ with an ‘honesty system’)... blaming immigrants.

In NZ, councils have essentially no ability to raise revenues to pay for this stuff except through rates. It's central governments dithering over projects like CRL (the previous government) or tanking light rail to Mangere (CC2M) that bear the responsibility here. To have a party that has been defined by its failure to address these issues (and in the case of CC2M how it went wrong is frankly absurd... tl;dr, council asked for money to build a "shovel ready" project, central government took over and now the project is back on the drawing board) not be apportioned any of this blame by a journalist? It's screwed up.

Did I mention Jacinda Ardern also wants to increase the length of the parliamentary term? And isn't getting rid of a controversial piece of legislation that enormously empowers party leaders even though Labour apparently only supported it because a party no longer in parliament, let alone government, made it a bottom line in coalition negotiations? If you look past the Covid free (ish*) surface, disturbing things are happening.

*something Wiles ignores is that a huge proportion of our MIQ travellers come from essentially Covid free Australia so, no, it is not valid to make a comparison to "all travellers"... the only basis on which a comparison can be made is "Covid sufferers going through MIQ".

RE: poll, apologies to people who really like "closed borders" and "ancestry visas/citizenship". With the first case, I assume that if you're anti-immigration you'll find trickle down and employer supported and temporary migration schemes to your taste. If you're into the ancestry visas, the closest proxy would be moral immigration settings. Points schemes are just a way of incorporating various kinds of objectives into a single system, but compare skills and employer supported schemes.

[Krasny-Volny]

I find it somewhat interesting that calls for more permissive immigration laws typically come from Westen countries, namely in North America, the EU, or Australia. From my time living overseas I can state with confidence that the less developed nations of the world tend to have highly restrictive immigration policies, and they tend to be skills based. As a result, most of the people who get approved by the immigration agencies in most of Africa and Asia tend to be highly skilled workers from more developed nations. Unskilled or underskilled economic migrants who do not possess critical occupational specialties that cannot be filled by locals are denied. These countries don’t want more security guards or construction workers; they want more white collar professionals, administrators and skilled tradespeople.

Note that I’m not counting refugees, despite the glut of them in Africa (and SE Asia too, although nobody talks about that) because a lot of them are driven into these nations by armed conflicts next door without going through the immigration bureaucracy - and for that reason often get persecuted by the governments of the host countries.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

2020 was the year the dream of an interconnected world turned into a nightmare, as international travel spread a pandemic that could've been contained to its home country if no one engaged in it. Popular opinion used to label people who never left their home country losers. Now we realize that if NO one left their home country, this pandemic would not have happened.

Now that I mention it, I wonder if THAT might have played a role in votes for Trump...

[Saiwania]

To answer the question, my favorite schemes when it comes to immigration are: closed borders and golden visas.

I basically want little to no immigration from developing countries to be allowed in. And I want for people who can pay say $10,000,000+ (the more the better) directly to the government as a one time payment, to automatically just be given citizenship.

The idea is that because much fewer people are actually rich, they deserve to be let in because if they did well back home, they'll do just as good at their new country of choice if not better. Plus the money they pay can be used to finance a greater number of projects and things without increasing tax burden, including better border security. It should be brilliant for the state's coffers and is win win in that it accomplishes what I like in one fell swoop.

Not enough people will have enough money to be let in, but those who are will benefit the country more than just a regular person.

Some Trivia:

Only under 2,200 Billionaires in the world.
But there are supposedly 46.8 million Millionaires in the world.

It goes to show the extreme inequalities inherent to wealth. If I raise to limit to a Billion, there are too few prospective candidates, while if I put the limit at a Million, it is too low for my liking because too many people are that rich. I'm liking the notion of a cap that I haven't decided on, and it should be like an auction to who gets a guaranteed ticket to citizenship for the given month and year.

[Forsher]

To answer the question, my favorite schemes when it comes to immigration are: closed borders and golden visas.

Two questions.

One, I assume you voted for the trickle down option? That seems to me to be the same as your gold visa idea.

Secondly, you spent a lot of time walking through how your scheme would work but I'm not sure why you want so little immigration?

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

(while also making it easier for the rich to immigrate)

Immigration settings will be very different when the border reopens, the government announced last night. In a speech actually delivered by minister Stuart Nash (immigration minister Kris Faafoi was sick) the government told businesses to prepare to employ far fewer migrant workers, and far more locals. Political editor Justin Giovannetti reported in our live updates that it follows plenty of other signals in this direction from the government. Here’s a set of key paragraphs about the proposed changes, and what they signify:

In recent weeks the Labour government has said that immigrants have been responsible for driving down wages and pressures on the country’s infrastructure and housing. Tonight, Nash made it clear that the high levels of migration seen in recent years is no longer welcome.

“When our borders fully open again, we can’t afford to simply turn on the tap to the previous immigration settings. That path is a continuation of pressures on our infrastructure … and downward pressure on wages. Since the borders closed, we’ve seen a reversal in the horticulture sector, for example, where there’s been a lift in wages to bring in local workers,” said Nash.

Nearly 5% of the country’s workers are on temporary visas, by far the highest level in the OECD. Thousands of those workers, including many in the healthcare sector, haven’t been able to bring their families into the country over the past year because of Covid-19 restrictions. In a sign of what’s to come, Nash said that won’t change. The government is instead creating a new exemption for foreign businesspeople who want to come here to negotiate deals in-person.

The speech was more about a direction of travel than a set of hard numbers to work with. But even within that, some observers were left confused at that lack of detail, reports the NZ Herald. As Stuff reports, there was no further clarity on either how quickly the direction would be implemented, or whether more resources would go to the under-pressure Immigration NZ – the latter question will be answered on Budget Day. Politik (paywalled) reported that some observers were left wondering where the “Kiwis first” workforce was actually going to come from. On The Spinoff, Bernard Hickey argued that a lack of migration planning generally has contributed to the infrastructure and housing deficit New Zealand now faces.

And finally, the numbers that give context for the policy reset: Radio NZ reports that immigration – in terms of people from overseas countries coming to live here – basically stopped over the last year. The net migration gain for the country last year was about 6k people – the year before it was more than 90k.

So... thoughts NSG? Is it appropriate for governments to use global pandemics to fundamentally overhaul immigration settings outside the context of pandemic restrictions? Should governments be enacting trickle down immigration policies ever? Does this reframe how you think about NZ?

I think this is disgusting. It's bad policy being made by bad actors and defended by people for no apparent reason. If you want details of why I think these things:

Look, this might not happen... the current government has a track record of incompetence on a truly mind boggling scale (honestly, the only thing it's mostly got right is Covid) and it's a meme that they make announcements of announcements, which this is in many ways. But, they have been using Covid to do some other major, radical even, policy changes as well, e.g. folding the DHBs into a single national health entity (not like the NHS, which, in any case, is a series of trusts probably not that dissimilar to the DHB system). And this has been a long-time coming. Before Covid and before the Mosque Attacks, Jacinda Ardern was "Meet New Zealand's Justin Trudeau—except she's more like Trump on immigration", so when Bernard Hickey says:

Ardern inherited Andrew Little’s quite tough migration policy, but didn’t implement it, or more accurately, former immigration minister Iain Lees Galloway couldn’t implement it without her support. She has always been a lukewarm supporter of the restrictive approach. Now we will see how serious Labour is about tightening the settings and dealing with the problems detailed above.

I don't believe it, not for a minute. Ardern was framed as an means of rebranding away from Little and Labour's 2007 campaign. Not changing any of that was a choice she and her Labour Party made. Opposition to immigration (and wildly oscillating ideas of what's "kind") are On Brand for Ardern. Similarly, Ardern protected, time and time again, Phil Twyford, who prior to his enormous cock ups in government was best known for deciding everyone with a Chinese sounding name was a foreigner and, therefore, the bane of NZ's existence. Ardern's response was a giant "what scandal?". So, when Hickey writes:

Both sides of politics have accidentally-on-purpose pursued a high population growth, high migration, and low infrastructure approach to growing the economy over the last two decades. We never really debated this and the refusal by ratepayers and councils to help build infrastructure is a de facto rejection of the policy.

It was the perfect match for bringing the government’s own budget back into surplus because all the benefits of higher wages and spending went straight to the bottom line through higher income and GST taxes, without the heavy cost of infrastructure investment. It also allowed governments to say they were growing the economy, albeit by having more people working harder, rather than through productivity and growing real wages from work.

what I think of is "more blame shifting". They've tried to blame the Reserve Bank, they banned foreign ownership as soon as they entered government, they closed the borders as soon as they had an excuse (albeit a good one) but have been a bit sketchy on which countries have had the borders closed and when, and finally they're back to where they started and what got them elected the first time (in other news: Government accused of running MIQ with an ‘honesty system’)... blaming immigrants.

In NZ, councils have essentially no ability to raise revenues to pay for this stuff except through rates. It's central governments dithering over projects like CRL (the previous government) or tanking light rail to Mangere (CC2M) that bear the responsibility here. To have a party that has been defined by its failure to address these issues (and in the case of CC2M how it went wrong is frankly absurd... tl;dr, council asked for money to build a "shovel ready" project, central government took over and now the project is back on the drawing board) not be apportioned any of this blame by a journalist? It's screwed up.

Did I mention Jacinda Ardern also wants to increase the length of the parliamentary term? And isn't getting rid of a controversial piece of legislation that enormously empowers party leaders even though Labour apparently only supported it because a party no longer in parliament, let alone government, made it a bottom line in coalition negotiations? If you look past the Covid free (ish*) surface, disturbing things are happening.

*something Wiles ignores is that a huge proportion of our MIQ travellers come from essentially Covid free Australia so, no, it is not valid to make a comparison to "all travellers"... the only basis on which a comparison can be made is "Covid sufferers going through MIQ".

RE: poll, apologies to people who really like "closed borders" and "ancestry visas/citizenship". With the first case, I assume that if you're anti-immigration you'll find trickle down and employer supported and temporary migration schemes to your taste. If you're into the ancestry visas, the closest proxy would be moral immigration settings. Points schemes are just a way of incorporating various kinds of objectives into a single system, but compare skills and employer supported schemes.

It does comes across as a hard pill to swallow. I didn’t think NZ was playing that game, but I’ll concede that my knowledge of NZ’s immigration policies and attitudes is pretty much null. I expected more open-mindedness.

When it comes to the topic, I prefer moral immigration and pathways to permanent residency/citizenship.

[Deacarsia]

This is one of the very few good things that seems to have come from the whole situation.

I am one of those who support closed borders and ancestry visas/citizenship.

[Atheris]

Wow, what a dick move.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

I basically want little to no immigration from developing countries to be allowed in.

How do you propose smoothing out the demographic transition, then?

For the record I wish to clarify my earlier statement. I don't believe this pandemic has credited immigration, only travel, or at least the idea that it's a good thing. We should already have had contempt, not admiration, for squandering so much fossil fuel on such short trips, but the pandemic just made it look even worse.

At least with immigration, the longer you stay, the shorter of a fraction your stay a 14-day quarantine is.

[Forsher]

It does comes across as a hard pill to swallow. I didn’t think NZ was playing that game, but I’ll concede that my knowledge of NZ’s immigration policies and attitudes is pretty much null. I expected more open-mindedness.

When it comes to the topic, I prefer moral immigration and pathways to permanent residency/citizenship.

Here is what I'd consider a crash course in the subject:

• NZ First (a coalition partner from 2017-20) is the primary anti-immigration/populist party in the country... but they have a record for not actually trying to implement this rhetoric when they end up in government
• Labour and NZ First both ran anti-immigration campaigns back in 2017, the Greens tried to run a variant but were forced to pull that after the party members rebelled... there was a feeling that Ardern would pull back from the policies if she were leader but she didn't
• During the previous government (well, technically, governments) there was actually an extensive immigration discourse in NZ... except it was an emigration or brain drain one that basically died off after the government starting charging interest on student loans on people who went overseas
• There is a housing crisis because buying houses is expensive (renters don't matter) and foreigners are responsible... after foreigners were banned and prices kept going up, a new cause was required (Labour appears to have set its sights on the Reserve/Central Bank and immigrants)
• Net Migration is at record highs... while this was true, what was never talked about is that net emigration of NZers was at historical lows (for context, there are 5 million people in NZ, it's thought there are between 600,000 to 1 million NZers overseas)... I don't even know if people remember the Brain Drain stuff (and it was everywhere ten years ago)
• Economic growth over the last fifteen or so years is down to increased immigration
• the right wing parliamentary parties are pro-immigration but racist

and of course stock standard "suppression of wages" stuff.

We might need to mention 501 deportations as well. Basically, Australia has a functionally shared labour market with NZ but not the other way around. You still need a passport and stuff but NZers' entitlements in Australia have been massively eroded over the last twenty years. The two most important things are this, though... there are a lot of NZers who were taken to Australia as children and when things are going well (even if it's practicable) acquiring citizenship is pointless. 501 deportations are (often) extrajudicial orders from the Immigration Minister in Australia to get rid of people who fail a character test. This has resulted in a lot of Australians being deported to NZ because legally they're NZ citizens. 501 deportees are generally blamed for the increase in gang and gun violence in Auckland.

Wow, what a dick move.

Jacinda Ardern is now pretending that actually they're not doing this. Honestly, I should've seen this coming... they announced a pay freeze last week and then said they hadn't announced a pay freeze. They're a complete disgrace, honestly. At least when John Key said or did crazy shit, he usually didn't deny that he'd said or done crazy shit (preferring the stock standard backtracking to gaslighting).

[Saiwania]

How do you propose smoothing out the demographic transition, then?

I propose to let the country's population and economy shrink or rise again naturally. I don't believe it'll ever really go all the way down to 0 people with the absense of any meaningful levels of immigration from overseas. Retirees would either keep working if they can't afford to retire, or gradually draw down their assets like having a reverse mortgage and etc. if not having family to fall back on.

Ideally, parents take care of their kids a bit longer if neccessary to help them through college/training (the parents don't pay for college/training, just provide the free housing so there isn't a rent burden), and when the youth are middle age, they can take care of their parents in return (so the parents can avoid spending as much on some years of retirement), and the seniors could serve as the day care for their kids' infants or young children (so the seniors' kids will want to keep their parents around if they now have kids of their own but will also not have to pay any expensive daycare costs- its win win win in a way!).

An extended family model over a nuclear family model, where household wealth can truly be concentrated and multiplied via parking it in the S&P 500 or so. Although for those people who can afford to adhere to a nuclear model, that is permitted as well.

Retirees who can't afford to retire should either keep working or if they can't, to fall back on family and if they don't have that, to use their entire assets or net worth to finance the rest of their life. If someone followed the 4% rule, they can definitely retire comfortably if they invested and saved/grew the amount they want to live on each year, multiplied by 25. That is what they'll need to retire. But they should retire at 80 instead of 65 just in case living costs more than 4% of net worth during some years.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

How do you propose smoothing out the demographic transition, then?

I propose to let the country's population and economy shrink or rise again naturally. I don't believe it'll ever really go all the way down to 0 people with the absense of any meaningful levels of immigration from overseas. Retirees would either keep working if they can't afford to retire, or gradually draw down their assets like having a reverse mortgage and etc. if not having family to fall back on.

Ideally, parents take care of their kids a bit longer, and when the youth are middle age, they can take care of their parents in return, and the seniors could serve as the day care for their kids' infants or young children. An extended family model over a nuclear family model, where household wealth can truly be concentrated and multiplied via parking it in the S&P 500 or so. Although for those people who can afford to adhere to a nuclear model, that is permitted as well.

Retirees who can't afford to retire should either keep working or if they can't, to fall back on family and if they don't have that, to use their entire assets or net worth to finance the rest of their life. If someone followed the 4% rule, they can definitely retire comfortably if they invested and saved/grew the amount they want to live on each year, multiplied by 25. That is what they'll need to retire. But they should retire at 80 instead of 65 just in case living costs more than 4% of net worth during some years.

Maybe as a goal to eventually shift society toward and try to make feasible someday, but for now, we are far too late into the disproportionately-elderly stage of the game to smooth out the demographic transition with anything short of mass migration.

Let's just hope we can drown out the voices of xenophobia well enough to encourage the migrants to stay. :/

Question: Would it be acceptable to make "how many children" the migrants can have while in their new country a condition of their entry, or would that constitute extortion? Because in the era of Trump I doubt you could get popular opinion on board for mass migration if the migrants are going to outbreed us.

[Saiwania]

Maybe as a goal to eventually shift society toward and try to make feasible someday, but for now, we are far too late into the disproportionately-elderly stage of the game to smooth out the demographic transition with anything short of mass migration.

I don't believe that at all. I feel my model is nearly without flaw, especially so if the question of retirement has no tax burden to it because it is completely outsourced to individuals to figure out on their own, in the same way that 401Ks and Roth IRAs and so on replaced traditional pensions. If someone can't afford to retire, they just have to keep working as long as they can. They should perhaps feel lucky because retirement wasn't always even a concept that existed.

If there aren't enough people, the country will get poorer, and if the country becomes poorer, the people who're still young enough will have more kids, perhaps way above replacement level, and eventually it'll reach equilibrium again. But the answer is not to rely on immigrants from overseas who'll change the demographics and characteristics of the nation beyond the amount that has to happen.

Here, my model makes it so the nation is isolationist but secure, and nationalistic but patriotic and self sufficient.

[GuessTheAltAccount]

Maybe as a goal to eventually shift society toward and try to make feasible someday, but for now, we are far too late into the disproportionately-elderly stage of the game to smooth out the demographic transition with anything short of mass migration.

I don't believe that at all. I feel my model is nearly without flaw, especially so if the question of retirement has no tax burden to it because it is completely outsourced to individuals to figure out on their own, in the same way that 401Ks and Roth IRAs and so on replaced traditional pensions. If someone can't afford to retire, they just have to keep working as long as they can. They should perhaps feel lucky because retirement wasn't always even a concept that existed.

If there aren't enough people, the country will get poorer, and if the country becomes poorer, the people who're still young enough will have more kids, perhaps way above replacement level, and eventually it'll reach equilibrium again. But the answer is not to rely on immigrants from overseas who'll change the demographics and characteristics of the nation beyond the amount that has to happen.

Here, my model makes it so the nation is isolationist but secure, and nationalistic but patriotic and self sufficient.

So if it was the model of the native-born citizens that failed, shouldn't you WANT the native-born citizens replaced?

[Saiwania]

So if it was the model of the native-born citizens that failed, shouldn't you WANT the native-born citizens replaced?

No, I'd want each respective country to remain how its meant to be.

Its more that there exists a fact about the human species that I don't like. Which is that poorer people have so many children, even if they can't afford it. Whilst the richer people are, the less likely they'll have kids at all- but if they do its later in life. Because whilst they could afford childcare, having kids will make it so they're less rich than before, and staying rich is considered far more important to many people than having kids and it'd interfere more with a high income lifestyle or career path.

So the more developed a country becomes, the fewer kids and the poorer a country is, the more kids are born by default.