Demand for visitor visas is three times what was expected. An incident management team has been installed at Immigration NZ. Meanwhile global trends suggest international student flows could reverse, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in The Bulletin.
Australia confronts major workforce issues
A lot is riding on our ability to deal with workforce shortages and rebuild sectors badly impacted by the pandemic. The global labour market is in turmoil, which has forced the government to soften its philosophical stance on immigration and, as Liam Dann says in this episode of The Detail, not be “too restrictive when it comes to migration”. It creates a reliance on our ability to attract people to New Zealand to work and study while the rest of the world competes for migrants and international student dollars too. Australia is short hundreds of thousands of workers. A government-led jobs and skills summit is currently underway in Canberra.
Incident management team brought in to Immigration New Zealand
The need to address the issue at pace, after a period of prolonged border shutdown, loads pressure onto our visa processing capacity. As RNZ’s Gill Bonnett reports, an incident management team has been brought into Immigration New Zealand (INZ) to speed up work and visitor visas. It’s probably fair to acknowledge visa processing delays are also a global problem, with an enormous backlog across the Tasman leaving one million prospective workers in limbo while in Canada nearly 169,000 international students are awaiting approval of their study permit applications. It’s also fair to question whether we, or perhaps anywhere right now, are match fit for mass migration.
Visitor visa demand has been around three times higher than expected
As BusinessDesk’s Jem Traylen reports (paywalled), an email sent to INZ staff on Wednesday by head of INZ, Alison McDonald, revealed that visitor visa demand has been around three times higher than expected since the borders reopened. The email said there was “more work to be done to process work and visitor visas at the speed employers and applicants expect, and to prepare for the surge in student visas from September.” National Party immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford said it was a highly irregular move. Immigration minister Michael Wood responded to questions about the incident management team on Tuesday, saying INZ had recently gone through a transformation programme and completed a “surge” recruitment plan.
International students returning but will we reach pre-pandemic levels?
So far we’ve had a smattering of stories about international students returning to New Zealand. The pandemic wiped $1b off the earnings of an industry that was worth $5b before the pandemic. We’ve been told to expect a slow recovery but will it actually ever return to pre-pandemic levels? Changes to immigration settings have impacted post-study work rights and require international students to have increased funds to support themselves while studying. This from the Asia New Zealand Foundation’s Simon Draper is a good read. Draper writes that the flow could go the other way. Where the Western world has seen Asia as a supplier of international students, the model is shifting as Asian universities invest in innovation and technology and shift up the global education rankings. US Universities are already facing headwinds.
