Immigration Policies Will Severely Affect Productivity

New Immigration Policies Will Severely Affect New Zealand Productivity

The recent changes by New Zealand Immigration (INZ) requiring employers to hire untrained New Zealanders to fill the positions for skilled workers will be a disaster for New Zealand productivity. There is already a severe skills shortage in most sectors of the economy, with employers struggling to fill positions. Employers are dependent on hiring skilled workers from overseas to meet the short-fall.

There has been in place for many years an effective process where employers have had to go through when hiring overseas workers, requiring employers to obtain WINZ approval before hiring overseas skilled workers. Recent changes to the INZ policy will now make it extremely difficult for employers to hire workers from overseas, having to prove that they have training programs in place to train and employ New Zealanders first. For most SME companies this is impractical.

The New Zealand economy has almost full employment at present. Most employers would prefer to hire Kiwis if there were suitable workers available. If businesses cannot obtain the skills, they require their growth and productivity will be severely affected. The new policies will impose yet another cost onto employers, who are already struggling to be competitive in the global marketplace.

Many overseas skilled workers come to New Zealand as it is perceived as being a paradise compared to many other countries. Sadly, all too often these workers often become disillusioned with the lack of opportunities and the dysfunctional NZ bureaucracy, and move to Australia.

Why is NZ lacking the skills employers require? The biggest cause is the growing dependence on the State in NZ society and with many young people affected by the break-down of the family structure, drugs and alcohol abuse, and lack of work ethic. There is the added failure of the education system to produce applicants with the skills that are required in the work place. Immigration policies favour overseas students to come to NZ to study “Business Courses”, yet make it impossible for them to study trade courses what employers are experiencing a critical shortage. New Zealand needs more plumbers and electricians, not white collar workers.

New Zealand Immigration policies will only lead further costs on NZ businesses who are already struggling to cope with increasing costs imposed upon them by endless government regulations. One of the most productive sectors in NZ economy has been the dairy sector which has been depended in recent years on migrant labour to function. Dairy farmer’s incomes have halved over the last couple of years, yet the government imposes increasing regulatory costs upon them – it seems that they want to destroy the producers and turn the NZ into a service economy.

Socialistic Government policies seem determined to have New Zealand become a third-world state, depended on borrowed money to employ more and more bureaucrats and people living on welfare. The latest changes dreamed up by some faceless socialistic bureaucratic seemed to have been designed to satisfy the rants of Winston Peters rather than support the producers of the economy that pay the taxes to keep these bureaucratic employed.

Bruce Porteous

ends

© Scoop Media