“The ACT Party will prioritise and streamline the immigration process for skilled workers where employers can’t find a skilled workforce in New Zealand,” says ACT’s Spokesperson for Immigration Dr James McDowall.

“For our economy to grow and for us to raise the standard of living, we need a workforce that has the necessary skills and is productively employed.

“Our SMEs and our major infrastructure projects are desperately short of skilled workers. While we build a domestic skilled workforce through our tertiary education institutions and focused apprenticeship programmes, we also need to attract skilled and semi-skilled workers from overseas to fill the gap.

“New Zealand was built on immigration. We have a population of five million, a workforce of only 2.4 million and about 300,000 people due to retire by 2030. We need to encourage people with the right skills to migrate to New Zealand.

“This would utilise ACT’s smart border policies and Covid-19 Wellbeing Plan to ensure we can safely bring people into the country.

“ACT is committed to attracting migrants to New Zealand who can provide the skills that businesses need. This would be done through a well-managed programme of bringing in the skills that are needed, while we train and enhance the skills base in our current population.

“It will require Government coordination of secondary and tertiary training, properly identified industry skills needs and an immigration process that meets the skills deficit in a timely and effective way.

“Business owners are crying out for skilled workers. We should be doing everything we can help make our SMEs as productive as possible, while training future generations in the areas where skills are required.

Our SME policy can be found here

Our Covid-19 wellbeing approach can be found here

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