Many more people from many more countries: if you wanted to describe how immigration has changed New Zealand in recent decades, that’s not a bad summary.
The “many more people” is there in the statistics: between the 2013 and 2018 censuses, migration added 250,000 people to this country – more than half of the population gain over those years – say the authors of this history of our immigration system.
As for the “many more countries”, just look around. According to the latest 12-month numbers, the biggest sources of foreign migrants were India, China, the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
None of this is fresh news. But there’s another feature of our immigration system that’s not so obvious: the huge number of migrants who are here only temporarily.
We may think of migrants as people setting out to make a new life for themselves in this country, but increasingly, that’s not the case. Instead, many are here for only a limited time, with little chance of becoming permanent residents.
How many fall into that category? Well, when Covid-19 closed the border in March 2020, about 300,000 – more than 6% of the people in New Zealand at the time – were here on temporary work or study visas. As the authors say, “in a word, many [migrants] have effectively become guest workers”.
The trio – social scientists from Auckland and Otago universities and Australian National University – describe immigration policy over the past two centuries but particularly since the 1970s and 80s, when we opened our doors to the citizens of many more nations.
This is dense, serious stuff, narrowly focused on official policy and based on interviews with former ministers of immigration, rather than talking to migrants and would-be migrants. Which isn’t a criticism, it’s just not that kind of book.
And it does shed light on a huge change in the nature of New Zealand, and New Zealanders.
The old immigration system was racist, beyond doubt. In the words of a 1953 Department of External Affairs memo: “Whereas we have done much to encourage immigration from Europe, we do everything to discourage it from Asia.”
But in the 1980s, a points system was introduced which aimed to choose migrants for their skills, rather than where they came from. The change was partly about fairness and partly about trying to select migrants with the most economic value.
Since then, the authors argue, immigration has become more and more about chasing economic gains. New Zealand’s attitude has become less “welcome stranger”, more “what can you do for me” (my words, not the authors’).
One result has been the effect on family migration, which was central back when immigration was all about building up the population. But now, although migrants with residence rights can bring their partners and dependent children, “they are effectively unable to bring parents or children over the age of 18 unless those people can gain entry themselves”.
Yes, the old imperial regime locked out people with the “wrong” skin colour, but “immigrants, especially ‘white’ ones, were formally accepted as residents with near-automatic pathways to naturalisation and citizenship”.
Today, in contrast, people on temporary visas have “different bundles of rights, stratified by the length of time they can live in the country, the work they can undertake, whether they can live with family and whether they can access public healthcare, education and other basic social services”. As well, temporary migrants are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and fraud.
And here’s the quote that will make some readers indignant and others wince: “Previously immigrants could come from any class if they were white. Now they can come from any race if they are rich.” We may still allow entry to people who we see as less-skilled, but only temporarily and with restrictions.
This book is also a reminder of times when immigration has become a hot issue: the 2004 newspaper stories subtly headlined “Inv-Asian”; Winston Peters’ 1996 call to “cut immigration to the bone”; or Labour’s bizarre 2015 attempt to blame rising house prices on buyers with “Chinese-sounding names”.
As an aside, the authors say New Zealand First’s approach, at least since 1996, has “arguably been more focused on rhetorically mobilising the anti-immigrant vote than on seeking substantive changes to immigration policy”. I believe that’s an academic way of saying that on this issue they’re all talk and not much action.
Academic as this book is, it raises a straightforward question: what’s the point of immigration? Is it to provide businesses with short-term labour and educational institutions with fee-paying students? Or is it about building up future generations of New Zealanders? And if it’s both, how do you balance the two objectives?
