Rt Hon Winston Peters

New Zealand First Leader

Member of Parliament for Northland
4 SEPTEMBER 2017

Immigration Far Worse than Revealed – Over 60,000 Not Recorded as Migrants

The massive influx of immigration is far worse than the National government reveals each month, says New Zealand First.

“Statistics NZ has admitted over 60,000 immigrants slipped through unrecorded as migrants on the official figures put out,” says New Zealand First Leader and Northland Member of Parliament, Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“There’s a 20% underestimate. Statistics NZ have been nothing but amateur sleuths using an outdated method that relies on people sticking to plans, and their honesty.

“No doubt a penny pinching National government has relegated our border statistics to this perilous state.

“Minister of Immigration Michael Woodhouse should have been asking questions when New Zealand First kept pointing out the country is being overwhelmed by migrants.

“As might have been expected big discrepancies have occurred in student visa classifications.

“The biggest underestimate was with people from southern and central Asia and this has been growing bigger in recent years.

“Indian migration has been consistently understated and UK migration overstated.

“New Zealanders knew something was seriously wrong.

“They are the ones queueing for medical care. Their kids are in school but lessons are in hallways or libraries. They can’t compete for jobs with migrants accepting cash and working mammoth hours just to stay here.

“Public services have not kept up. Any attempt to plan public services around population growth would have been seriously impaired by this blunder.

“The massive underestimate was revealed when StatsNZ switched to a new system that uses the history of their time in New Zealand instead of arrival/departure cards on which they state their intentions.

“Neither the National Government nor the Labour government paid adequate attention to immigration to realise there was a huge bungle in counting the number of people coming in.

“At present government figures claim there is record net migration of more than 72,400.

“According to Infometrics, who are data analysis experts, a more accurate figure would be over 80,000 and a lot of them are low-skilled.

“Minister Woodhouse has some explaining to do. No wonder he chickened out twice from debating this party leader,” says Mr Peters.

ENDS

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