NZ 'too tough' on rich immigrant investors say lawyers

The "unrealistically high" English language requirement of potential immigrants to New Zealand is driving away business investors and losing the country billions, say immigration lawyers from here and Australia.

At a meeting of immigration specialists in Auckland yesterday, the Herald was told New Zealand lost out to countries such as Australia because immigrants were expected to have university-entry English language skills.

The comments came on the day New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said New Zealand allowed too many people to migrate here who did not speak English.

Marcus Beveridge, chairman of the NZ Association for Migration and Investment, said the opposite was true, with unreasonably high requirements for English.

Mr Beveridge said the policy was self-defeating and harming the top end of the immigration spectrum since the Government in November 2002 introduced a sophisticated level of written and spoken English as a precondition of obtaining residency under virtually any immigration category.

Application numbers in the investor category were diminishing dramatically, he said.

"In addition, our officials have declined something like 6000 applications, primarily from China, which represents say $6 billion to $9 billion of lost potential investment ."

Mr Beveridge said major players in the millionaire or investor category were typically North Asian.

"The major markets are China and Korea, but the vast majority don't speak English."

North Asian-based approvals peaked in 2002 when 1122 applications were approved by the Immigration Service.

"To date this year only a couple of hundred or so applications have been lodged under the investor category."

Mark Tarrant, a former Auckland immigration lawyer now based in Sydney, said New Zealand was also being hurt in the skilled migrant category because of its high demands of English language proficiency.

He said many more skilled migrants were successful in getting into Australia, which had a more realistic requirement of vocational English, like being able to read safety manuals and take instructions.

He found it surprising that, given New Zealand's critical skills shortages, the country could not take a similar approach, especially as the work environment in the two countries was the same.

"So Australia is getting the skilled and business people ... Australia is laughing. They're getting them all in."

Mr Tarrant said that in Australia, investors could also bypass English requirements through state-sponsored entry and, unlike New Zealand, Australia recognised work experience in countries of origin.