Rt Hon Winston Peters

New Zealand First Leader

Member of Parliament for Northland
19 APRIL 2017

Immigration Con by National After Years of Denials

National’s tweaking immigration is just a dog whistle to show they’re doing something but in reality it’s a callous attempt to hold onto power, says New Zealand First Leader and Northland Member of Parliament Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“They are taking note of their polls and realise Kiwis have had enough of the country being flooded with unskilled foreign workers.

“They are fiddling with the issue while the plain fact is foreign workers will still be able to come here when employers claim they can’t get Kiwis.

“We have 139,000 Kiwis out of work and many of them are desperate to get a job.

“Statistics show in the February 2017 year we had a record 128,800 migrant arrivals and in the same period 71,300 more migrants arrived in New Zealand than left.

“Now, Bill English is giving the pretence of action: more police, more money for aged care workers, and now tweaking immigration.

“Over the last eight years there have been countless tweaks while immigration has continued to go through the roof.

“Last year Treasury, the Reserve Bank, MBIE and ANZ called for tighter immigration because of large numbers of low skilled foreign workers coming to New Zealand but the government ignored them and Mr English even denied there had been an influx of low-skilled foreign workers.

“He claimed in Parliament record migration was driven by New Zealanders staying or coming home from Australia and international students coming here.

“The underbelly of National’s borderless free-for-all to get money from foreign students and to prop up industries with cheap labour is being exposed repeatedly.

“Today we learned one of the country’s biggest schools forinternational students has been passing cookery students who could not boil or fry an egg.

“Also a recent study by Dr Christina Stringer of Auckland University,Worker Exploitation in NZ: A Troubling Landscape, showed exploitation of low-skilled overseas workers is widespread in our construction, fishing, hospitality, dairy, horticulture and viticulture industries.

“Immigration numbers must be reduced to near 10,000 net per year with many skilled workers bonded to work in regions for five years before they can relocate to cities such as Auckland,” says Mr Peters.

ENDS

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