'Talented' leapfrog to front of immigration queue

Immigration will surge from a previous target of 38,000 to as many as 50,000 people a year under a new Government policy.

The New Zealand Immigration Programme will focus on attracting "talent".

Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel said the programme was a response to calls for the country to attract more skilled and business migrants.

The programme streamlines the existing categories under which people can be granted residence and adjusts criteria within those categories.

"Underpinning the programme is our desire to ensure that talent tops the list of residence approvals," said Lianne Dalziel.

"To achieve this we are developing a Talent Visa policy.

"Until now, talent has taken the back seat to the other, demand-driven, categories.

"As a result skilled and business migrants became a de facto residual category, making up numbers once the other categories were filled," she said.

The new system sets the total number of residence approvals at 45,000 annually for the next three years.

This includes a tolerance of 10 per cent, meaning that approvals in any year could be about 50,000.

So there will be at least 27,000 skilled and business migrants each year.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the new policy showed all the hallmarks of "the same old mess".

He predicted that the overwhelming majority of new immigrants would settle in Auckland and the rest of the country would be asked to pay for all sorts of infrastructural costs to accommodate them.

"This is not a new policy at all but an ad hoc regurgitation of failed immigration policies that Labour and National have pursued for years at no advantage to the New Zealand economy.

"This number in real terms is five times that which Australia is taking in per annum and there is no rationale behind it.

"Sound immigration policy should be based on the rapid expansion of our exports and an increase in our intellectual wealth," said Mr Peters.

"That is not what is going to happen here as it has not happened in the last 12 years, where at times well over 40 per cent of all new immigrants are not placed in the economy, but rather become another cost to the New Zealand taxpayer."