01/04/08 - Changes to ESOL requirements

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1 March 2008 

From 31 March 2008 applicants under the Skilled Migrant or Business categories who have pre-purchased English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) tuition will now have up to five years to take up the tuition.

07/04/08 - Philip Burdon: Misused label fuels fears of 'invasion'

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Monday April 07, 2008

Concern raised about the threat of Asian immigration since the release of population projections by Statistics New Zealand is regrettable. At the core of these assertions is the unfortunate belief that there is a standard and ubiquitous Asian migrant.

The reality is that immigrants from Asia come from a range of countries that often have little in common with one another linguistically, historically and culturally.

New Zealand's largest Asian ethnic subgroups are Chinese and Indian, followed by smaller groupings of Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Sri Lankan, Cambodian, Thai and people from other Asian countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.

So to present people from so many countries as one broad ethnicity on the way to "overtaking" the Maori population is plainly wrong.

Sadly, this narrow view of Asian as an ethnicity is compounded by broadcast images that accompanied news reports on this issue which only seem to show the Chinese, Japanese or Korean faces that many New Zealanders find recognisably Asian.

Where, for instance, were the South Asian or Southeast Asian faces of New Zealand?

Another misconception is that most migrants from Asia won't speak English.

The reality is that while China, India and Korea are likely to remain important sources of migrants for many years, policy changes that emphasise English language skills have been shown to reduce flows from China and Korea in particular.

But such changes would have less effect on potential migrants from South Asian countries, such as India, Sri Lanka and parts of Southeast Asia because of the prevalence of English in the education system.

It is also important to bear in mind that other countries have changed in the way that New Zealand is changing.

Canada, Australia and the US are prosperous and diverse countries built on foundations of immigration. Cities such as Melbourne, Sydney, San Francisco, Vancouver and Toronto are incredibly diverse and thriving places with large Asian communities.

Many New Zealanders even choose to live in these cities.

Another factor is that by 2026 many Asian New Zealanders will have been born here. They and many of those who arrive as children will have gone through New Zealand's education system and be New Zealanders in every sense of the term.

There is also the increasing factor of cross-cultural marriage and relationships. Studies show that emerging generations of New Zealanders are increasingly likely to identify with more than one ethnicity.

For example, in 2006 about 10 per cent of the New Zealand population identified with more than one broad ethnic group and this was especially the case for people under 15. While the portion of the Asian population identifying with more than one broad ethnic group was slightly lower at 8 per cent, it is very different for those young Asian New Zealanders under 15, where nearly one in five identified with more than one ethnic group - real evidence of intermarriage between races.

Thus it is likely that over time an increasing part of the Asian population will also have European, Maori, Pacific and other identities.

The Asia New Zealand Foundation's Diverse Auckland report, to be released this week, highlights the complexity of what defines a New Zealander, with the ongoing debate about national identity increasingly likely to involve multiple layers.At long last Asian people are recognised as a component of our national identity. But acknowledgment of this has been relatively recent and grudging, although Asian communities have been a part of New Zealand society since the mid-1800s.

Meanwhile, the contemporary picture reveals that Asian New Zealanders - whether they were born here or came as migrants - are of significant social and economic importance.

They are highly motivated. They are great achievers. They are ambitious and are playing a key role in shaping New Zealand's future.

It is also important to reflect that while the media and many of the public often use the term "Asian" as if it represents a single identity and voice, most Asian people do not think of it as their primary identity.

It may even come as a surprise to some that they might prefer to identify themselves as New Zealanders.

(Source NZ Herald, Philip Burdon, Former Cabinet Minister Philip Burdon is the chairman of the Asia New Zealand Foundation)

06/04/08 - Bill Ralston: Evil ethnic rice ball of doom

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Sunday April 06, 2008

With boring predictability, New Zealand First has again played the race card. Presumably because it wouldn't look too good for the Minister of Foreign Affairs to be attacking Asian immigration when we are about to sign a free-trade agreement with China, deputy leader Peter Brown must have been delegated the task to try to kick-start the party's flagging poll ratings this election year.

Nothing galvanises New Zealand First's rednecks quite like a rollicking attack on immigrants.

Echoing the infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech by British politician Enoch Powell back in the 60s, Brown wailed that we would soon be swamped by Asians who, he claims, refuse to integrate into New Zealand society.  By 2026 they could make up 16 per cent of the population and number more than 400,000.Brown, an immigrant himself, was appalled by the prospect of this "Yellow Peril".  What of the poor Maori, he wondered ingenuously, who would be in danger of being out-numbered by Asians? His crocodile tears for Maori might be more believable if he hadn't gone on to say there's nothing wrong with migration, it's just Asians in those kind of numbers weren't the right sort of migrants. Brown seemed to have no problem with solid British stock, or anyone who is white. Curiously, he denied this was racist.

His main complaints were that Asians clustered together in some suburbs of Auckland, didn't have full command of the English language, didn't "share our values", and wouldn't "integrate".Strangers in a strange land, virtually all migrant groups initially cluster together, taking comfort from having nearby people of a similar background to their own.

In fact, Brown might like to focus on Auckland's East Coast Bays, where migrants from Southern Africa are clustered. In this little Transvaal by the sea, many people stubbornly insist on speaking Afrikaans at home. Worse, they don't share our values - the swine have been known to wear green footie jerseys and cheer for South Africa in the World Cup.
By Brown's standards they should be rounded up and shipped back to where they came from. Except, of course, they are acceptably white.

I can remember the first generation of Samoans to migrate here in the 50s and 60s. They clung to their language, lived together in suburbs like Grey Lynn and didn't share quite the same values as New Zealanders. For example, they went in droves to church on Sundays.
The second and third generation Samoans are far more "integrated" into New Zealand, sharing our vices, living all over the country, and skipping church.

They do play better football than Pakeha but apart from those sorts of helpful differences, the locally born Samoans are pretty much like the rest of us.

Brown also seems confused about what "integration" actually means. When I spoke to him he insisted it meant that migrants needed to become us. They should be Kiwi clones. I pointed out that his definition was really assimilation, a policy long-abandoned by New Zealand governments in favour of having a rich multi-cultural society in which various racial and ethnic groups exist side by side.

He also seemed incapable of differentiating between Asian nationalities. Culturally, a Korean is different from a Han Chinese, who is different from a Japanese who differs greatly from a Vietnamese. Brown seemed to lump them all together in one evil ethnic rice ball of doom.

My experience of New Zealand-born Chinese, whose parents and grandparents came here many years ago, is that they are fully "integrated" to a level at which even Brown would approve. Compared with their hardworking ancestors, they are now just as slack as the rest of us.

Brown is trapped in his own ethnic background. He points to Britain and the rise of Islam there, warning that could happen here as alien cultures and religions overwhelm our own. But I cannot really see there is likely to be a surge in radical Buddhism, militant Confucianism, violent Taoism, or virulent agnosticism.

Britain has serious racial issues because, for the past 50 years, people like Brown have failed to reach out to acknowledge or embrace these new communities.

In condemning Brown as a racist, United Future leader Peter Dunne raises a good point. New Zealand is in danger of making a similar mistake to Britain, inviting migrants to this country but doing little to ease their entry into our society so that they find it harder to integrate.

I hope by 2026 various Asian ethnicities are 16 per cent of the New Zealand population. We will be a culturally and materially wealthier nation for it.

(Source NZ Herald Bill Ralston)

26/03/08 - Technology is finally changing the way we travel

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Wednesday March 26, 2008

If you've ever come off a long flight and had to stand tired and crumpled in a queue for passport control, you'll appreciate the logic behind Smartgate, the latest attempt at airport automation.

It's a system that lets arriving passengers with biometric-enabled passports (ePassports) check themselves through immigration and customs at computer kiosks. It has been trialled at Brisbane airport and will get a test run at Wellington airport in the coming months.

Here's how the system works: when you get off the plane instead of joining the snaking queue at passport control you instead race for an ePassport terminal and swipe your passport through it.

The computer uploads a digital photo of your face, asks you the types of standard questions immigration and customs officers are likely to and prints a ticket for you. As you progress through the airport you come to another kiosk where you enter your ticket.

Three cameras simultaneously scan your face and, using facial-recognition software that measures the structure of your facial features and the space between them, decides whether you are the person the computer thinks you are. If there's a match, you're on your way. If not, you have a problem.

There were a few hiccups last year in getting the technology working properly, mainly due to integrating the ePassport system with different kiosks and readers around airports.

But it is likely to increasingly be the process you have the option of going through initially as a trans-Tasman passenger, then hopefully further afield. I say hopefully, because I'm all in favour of anything that speeds up the arrival process at the big airports around the world. Tokyo, Dubai, London Heathrow and Los Angeles have what are in my experience the longest airport arrival queues. Will tapping screens on computers be any faster than talking to humans?

Probably, but the system will take years to implement on a global system - New Zealand, for its part, wants the system in place for trans-Tasman travel by the 2011 Rugby World Cup. I look forward to checking out the system at Wellington Airport - once I get an ePassport.

Ultimately, the same process will be in place for international airport departures because border control authorities want to make sure the people leaving the country are the correct passport holders. Currently humans do all that vetting.

Changes are also afoot in the air when it comes to in-flight communications. Qantas, by the end of the year, will let passengers on certain Australian domestic routes send and receive SMS messages and emails.

No pricing has been revealed, but stopping short of offering voice calling from the air shows the airline is wary of the potential backlash from passengers annoyed at having to sit next to people talking on their mobile phones at 30,000 feet. Emirates is going further, using AeroMobile technology to allow calls to be made on certain flights.

The first calls from the air were made a few days ago by passengers using the service on a Dubai-Casablanca Emirates flight.

Air New Zealand doesn't appear to be even trialling the technology yet. In the states however, there's a big push underway to rekindle the market for broadband in the air, with Aircell using its technology on American Airlines and Virgin America flights to offer Wi-Fi access to passengers priced from US$10 for a trip lasting up to three hours.

The technology is less relevant to us here in New Zealand, as such services are more useful for long haul trips. Due to the vast tracts of ocean we need to cross to get anywhere, a satellite-based broadband system is required. That's more expensive to offer than the ground-based antenna system Aircell operates on using radio frequencies it has secured.

I like the idea of having email and web-access in the air ever since I used the in-seat entertainment system on an Emirates flight to send email. Still, the convenience of it came at a high premium. Voice calls from the air are of less interest to me. I'd rather not sit there listening to someone else's mid-air phone call and I'm sure the feeling would be mutual with my fellow passengers.

(Source NZ Herald Peter Griffin)

12/03/08 - Transit Visa policy changes

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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

From Friday 28 March 2008, Immigration New Zealand’s transit visa policy is being extended to require transit visas for all travel through New Zealand, regardless of embarkation point or destination.

25/03/08 - Policy changes effective 31 March 2008

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25 March 2008

A number of policy changes will come into effect on 31 March 2008. A brief summary of the key changes are as follows;

Residence changes 

• The minimum income requirement for offers of employment for applicants under the Pacific Access Category and Samoan Quota Scheme will increase from $29,430.96 to $29,897.92.
• Applicants granted residence under the Active Investor Migrant Policy will have to pay a migrant levy. Note: this change is effective 20 March 2008.  
• Business categories applicants and Skilled Migrant Category applicants who pre-purchase ESOL tuition will be entitled to the tuition for up to five years, whether they purchase the tuition in New Zealand or overseas.
• The requirement for applicants to pre-purchase ESOL tuition prior to being granted a Work to Residence visa or permit will be removed. 
  

Temporary entry changes 

• Minor amendments will be made to clarify visitor and work policies for partners of New Zealand citizens or residents. 
• Clarification to visitor policy for APEC cardholders. 
• Changes to Working Holidays Schemes. 
• Changes to transit visa policy effective 28 March 2008.

17/03/08 - NZ to foot $1m bill for HIV-positive refugees

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Monday March 17, 2008

HIV treatment and drugs for Zimbabwean refugees granted residency in New Zealand could cost the country nearly $1 million a year.Immigration figures obtained by The Dominion Post show that of the 939 Zimbabweans who fled the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe, 50 would receive treatment for HIV.

The 50 refugees included more than a dozen who came forward during an Aids/HIV amnesty which waived health conditions on their application for residency.

The Ministry of Health said they would meet the anti-retroviral treatment costs of $18,000 a year for each person infected - totalling $900,000 for the 50.

NZ Aids Foundation spokesman Eamonn Smythe said granting residency to the Zimbabweans was a positive humanitarian move.  "These are people who are working, paying taxes, contributing to the New Zealand economy and helping to build strong communities," he told The Dominion Post.

Under the 2005 Special Zimbabwe Residence Policy just under 600 refugees were granted residence. However, many had not come forward. Believing some were not coming forward fearing rejection after the introduction of required mandatory HIV screening, the Government offered the remaining refugees an amnesty in August 2006, promising they would not be rejected if they were found to be HIV-positive.

The Government admitted then it erred in allowing Zimbabweans into the country without conducting HIV tests.

(Source NZPA)

17/03/08 - Minister seeks report on China Air NZ workers

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Monday March 17, 2008

Labour Minister Trevor Mallard has asked the Department of Labour to look into pay disparities between Air New Zealand staff based in China and here.

On Saturday, former immigration minister Tuariki John Delamere labelled the state airline a "flying sweat shop" for paying Chinese flight attendants on Auckland-Shanghai services little more than a quarter of their New Zealand colleagues' wages.
He said the majority Government-owned airline hired more than 30 Chinese workers.

The Weekend Herald quoted an Air New Zealand official as saying the Chinese workers were not employed directly by the airline but were seconded by a Chinese company, Fasco, which set their salaries based on market relativity in China.

The Alliance Party co-leader Victor Billot in a statement said the issue was a "red alert" to workers about what free trade deals would mean for New Zealand. "This situation is exactly what we will see more of under the free trade scam being pushed through behind closed doors the use of cross-border labour with inferior conditions, contracting out, aggressive corporates, and a hands-off approach by Government to push down wages and conditions for workers."

Mr Billot predicted the new step would be for Air NZ to contract out all their international and domestic flight crews to Chinese labour hire agencies. He called on the Government to intervene.In today's Herald, Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union head Andrew Little backed that call.

A spokeswoman for Mr Mallard confirmed Mr Mallard had this morning asked the department to report to him. He expected that to be done within the next fortnight.

(Source NZPA)

15/03/08 - Brian Gaynor: Falling house prices start ripple effect

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Saturday March 15, 2008

The latest residential property statistics show that house prices are falling and there is unlikely to be any improvement in the short term.A sustained downturn in the housing sector, which has been one of the main drivers behind the strong economy in recent years, will impact on consumer confidence, retail spending and domestic growth.

February sales data has been released by three organisations: Barfoot & Thompson, Quotable Value New Zealand and the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ).

Auckland real estate agent Barfoot & Thompson reported settled sales of only 603 properties last month, compared with 989 properties in February last year, with the average sales price dropping from $504,079 to $495,272.
Managing director Peter Thompson said it was a buyers' market and volume had declined because sellers had been slow to adapt to the changing market conditions.

Quotable Value (QV), which produces national data on a rolling three-monthly basis, said the average sale price in the period from December to last month was $393,240 compared with an all-time high of $406,176 in the three months ended last October.

QV spokesman Bruce Hancock said: "Clearly the market is slowing down and taking a breather, and we expect this will continue given current market conditions. It looks like we may be in for a sustained period of less activity in the property market."

Finally REINZ, which produces the most comprehensive data, said the national median sale price was $337,500 last month compared with $340,000 in January and $335,000 in February last year.

As demonstrated by the REINZ figures in the first table, New Zealand house prices have risen sharply over the past six years. In the six years to last month the median price increased by 81.5 per cent from $186,000 to $337,500 while the stock exchange's NZX-50 Gross Index strengthened by 78.6 per cent over the same period.

The property market showed clear signs of peaking in mid-2007 when the median price reached $351,500 and last month's figure was 4 per cent below this all-time high. The sales volume figures in the second table give a clearer picture of market conditions over the past few months.
Volumes remained strong through the first few months of last year but began to fall, on a year-on-year basis, from mid-year onwards. The decline has accelerated in recent months with sales volume for the past six months 28.4 per cent down on the same period in 2006-07.

House price falls tend to lag volume declines and this trend is expected to continue over the next few months. It would not be surprising to see the median sale price fall to around $320,000 in the second half of this year, representing a decline of between 7 and 9 per cent compared with the second half of last year.

Auckland and Northland are the weakest markets in terms of price and volume. Auckland's February volume was down 42.6 per cent compared with February last year, while the median price fell 0.7 per cent.

The next few months will give a clearer indication of the state of the market as there is usually a strong bout of activity in the March to May period before the advent of the quieter winter months.

It is now a buyers' market but most vendors remain unwilling to drop their prices to achieve a sale. This is reflected in the number of days it takes to sell a house which has shot up from 32 days in February last year to 50 days last month.
Real estate agents will have to convince sellers to drop their price if they want to sell their property.

Several items affect the housing market including external migration, bank lending, interest rates and the employment situation.

External migration has fallen sharply from 34,906 in the 2003 calendar year to only 4799 in the 12 months ended in January this year. Based on recent trends there is a strong possibility that the country's annual immigration figures will turn negative by mid-year. This would have a damaging impact on the residential property market.

Aggressive lending by the trading banks has played a major role in the housing boom. Between January 2002 and this January bank mortgage lending surged by 115.2 per cent, from $68.6 billion to $147.6 billion. This has been encouraged by bank capital adequacy rules that allow banks to lend twice as much on residential property for any given amount of capital compared with most other types of loans.

For example, banks have been able to lend $200 million on residential mortgages for every $8 million of capital but only $100 million to businesses for the same amount of capital. This has encouraged the Australian-owned banks to focus on housing loans in NZ because it minimises the amount of capital they have had to commit to this country.

The trading banks have been given more flexibility under new capital adequacy rules introduced this year but they are unlikely to maintain their aggressive mortgage lending policies because of the downturn in values.
Individuals will also approach borrowing more cautiously because the floating interest rate is now 10.62 per cent compared with 9.63 per cent 12 months ago and the five-year fixed rate has risen from 8.04 per cent to 9.24 per cent over the same period.

A major positive feature for housing is the tight labour and low unemployment rate as individuals are much more likely to borrow and move to a better home when their employment outlook is secure. The unemployment rate dropped to just 3.4 per cent in the December quarter, well below 3.8 per cent in the December 2006 quarter, and the employment market continues to remain tight although it is normally a lagging indicator.

The housing market has a huge impact on the New Zealand economy because in terms of the total housing values/share market capitalisation ratio and total housing values/GDP ratio we are far more dependent on residential property than any other western country.

There has been a great deal of comment and analysis about the wealth effect of sharemarket falls on the United States economy but we should be much more concerned about the wealth impact of a decline in house prices on retail spending and the New Zealand economy.

Statistics released on Thursday indicate the retail sector is performing relatively well in this country compared with the US. Seasonally adjusted sales for last month rose by 0.3 per cent in New Zealand compared with January but declined by 0.6 per cent in the US over the same period.

Petrol prices continue to have a big impact on spending patterns as NZ petrol station sales rose 29 per cent last month compared with February 2007 and were 20.2 per cent up in the US.

Seasonally adjusted retail sales, excluding petrol, were 3.5 per cent higher in New Zealand compared with February last year while they increased by just 0.9 per cent in the US.

Retail sales will continue to be a major bellwether for the domestic economy but residential housing will be the most critical factor.

The best way to assess the state of the economy is to keep a close eye on the number of For Sale signs in your neighbourhood.

(Source: Brian Gaynor, executive director of Milford Asset Management)

10/03/08 - Immigration staff's ignorance appals migrants

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Monday March 10, 2008

As more New Zealand residents quit the country, wannabe Kiwis say the key obstacle to calling Aotearoa home is the Immigration Service.

Long delays, missing documents and a lack of general knowledge among immigration officers were just some of the things residency applicants who spoke to the Herald complained of.Singaporean entertainer William David accused the service of incompetence and described his experience as "a nightmare you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy".

"They lost my medical documents and made me go through the entire process three times. My case manager didn't know where Singapore was, arguing that it is a small village and not a country, and he also said he couldn't view the DVDs I submitted to support my application because he didn't have a DVD player," said Mr David, who is applying for residency under the talent visa category.

In November 2006, his wife missed her mother's funeral in Singapore because the service did not release her passport, which he said had been in its possession for almost six months.

A Malaysian applicant, who did not wish to be named for fear it could jeopardise his application as a skilled migrant, described his case manager as "ignorant". "I couldn't believe it when my case manager asked me if Malaysia was a state in Africa, probably mistaking it for Malawi," he said.  "I shudder at the thought that the fate of me and my family ... rests with these people."

Amritbhai Vallabhbhai Patel, who lives in New Delhi, applied for New Zealand residency in 2005 to join his family here, but as of yesterday he still had not received news on the status of his application. His sister Chanchal Puna said: "It is causing my parents and siblings a lot of stress and I think it is very cruel for NZIS to be playing with people's lives like that."

Through an immigration consultant, she sought an answer from the service. The reply she got from its Asia and Middle East regional manager, Marie Sullivan, said: "The application lodged on 11 August 2005 was placed in a managed queue of low-priority applications ... it was allocated to a visa officer on November 2006"- more than a year after it was submitted at the New Delhi branch office.

The letter, dated February 27, also said because the New Delhi branch "has received a larger than expected increase in the volume of applications ... the processing of permanent residence applications has been put on hold temporarily".

A spokeswoman for the service could not comment yesterday.

"Three years is a ridiculously long time to be waiting for an answer," Ms Puna said, "and if they didn't have the resources to process applications then they should not have accepted our fees and the applications to start with."

Mr David and Mr Patel have filed complaints against the Immigration Service to the Office of the Ombudsmen.
Maria Shearer, a former immigration officer, said high staff turnover and the revamp of the application processing systems were to be blamed for some of the poor service.

"Since it changed the 'one case manager to one applicant [system]' to a factory-like system where a single application is passed on to up to five different officers, there has been an increase in cases of lost documents and misplaced passports.
"Also, there is a very high staff turnover and there isn't a standard for officers to assess cases, and different people have different standards."

The Department of Labour, which oversees the Immigration Service, told the Herald it was not prepared to discuss individual applications.

(Source Lincoln Tan NZ Herald)