The magazine for alumni and friends of Massey University.
Issue 14, April 2002

The importance of immigration to New Zealand’s future

Immigration, as it has been since the 1800s, is vitally important to New Zealand’s collective well-being. If anything, it has gained new importance in the last decade for a range of demographic and political reasons.

By the 1990s immigration had become the major engine for demographic growth. It had taken over from natural population growth because of declining birth rates, an ageing population and emigration. For example, since 1960 New Zealand has seen 600,700 of its citizens leave on a permanent or long-term basis while 651,500 immigrants have arrived, leaving a net balance of 50,800. Immigration provides people on the positive side of the demographic ledger.

It also enables us to recruit skills and capital, and develop new global linkages. We are one of 84 countries facing declining domestic population numbers, and we are having to compete with many other countries to attract skilled migrants. The main talent pools are now provided by India, China and Eastern Europe, and it is no accident that the first two provide the largest immigrant groups arriving in New Zealand currently. Our future economic prosperity depends – although not exclusively – on attracting those with needed skills to New Zealand.

If these imperatives are clear, the impact of recent immigration policy and the political options are somewhat more problematic.

New Zealand, along with Australia, Canada, the USA and Israel, is one of the classic immigration-receiving countries. In the last two decades this group has been joined by others, including many in Europe, which have traditionally been countries of emigration.

Two things have dramatically changed locally. The first is that although New Zealand remains a country of immigration, as the figures above indicate we are also now a country of emigration. It is estimated that 800,000 New Zealanders live in other countries. For the first time we have a diaspora that is significant both in size and composition. These are often young, skilled New Zealanders.

The second issue is the changing ethnic and national make-up of our immigration flows. The first indication that the homogeneous immigration from the UK and Ireland of colonial New Zealand was going to change was the arrival of Pacific peoples from the 1960s. The existing discriminatory immigration policy framework was finally changed with a major review in 1986, and this produced the second wave of non-European immigrants, this time from Asia. It has been reinforced by the arrival of students and tourists from Asia.

It is disappointing – although perhaps inevitable – to see the emergence of anti-immigrant (read anti-Pacific and Asian immigrants) sentiments, and now politics. To invoke Enoch Powell’s racism or to talk of an “immigrant holocaust” is simply misplaced. But there are important political and policy issues which deserve our collective attention.

To ask who and how many immigrants should be admitted are critical questions. The point is that we do not have, and have really never had, unregulated immigration. We have been highly selective and have historically operated a racially discriminatory policy. In a globalising world, we will continue to be selective in our national interests but there is no room nor reason to be discriminatory.

This then raises post-arrival issues. Immigration contributes significantly to questions of nation-building and our collective future. While we have improved the processes of selecting immigrants, the question of their settlement is a rather different matter. We do not operate the extensive immigrant settlement programmes of Canada or Australia. We have not sought to provide the support services that would ensure that immigrants adjust rapidly and that we then make full use of their skills and knowledge. The unemployment and underemployment statistics for immigrants testify to this.

There is also the question of the response of New Zealanders – as individuals or communities – to these newcomers. Pakeha, in particular, are often monocultural and monolingual. Pacific and Asian peoples have disrupted this comfortable and insular existence. As employers, for example, New Zealanders still do not appreciate the social and economic skills that these immigrants could provide, and are typically reluctant to employ them.

We need to debate what an appropriate policy framework might look like given this cultural diversity. We have explored issues of biculturalism in the last three decades, but the question of an appropriate multiculturalism is still vague at best. Minimally, it should recognise and complement the existing biculturalism.

Ultimately, immigration contributes to critical debates about what it means to be a New Zealander, the sort of country we want for the future and what is important in terms of our cultural identity as immigrants and as New Zealanders. Let’s make that an open, positive debate and not cast immigration or immigrants as a problem.