We have to better plan our immigration settings for the future

In my article last month, I discussed New Zealand’s boom and bust immigration cycles and the need for longer-term planning and policies.

The current situation with nurses is a prime example of such a cycle. Less than a year ago, the NZ Nurses Association reported a need for 4,000 extra nurses and healthcare workers. Nurses were on the Immigration NZ Green List for fast-track residence, and there were waiting lists for overseas nurses to requalify for NZ nursing registration. Fast forward to today, and we now have hundreds of NZ registered, overseas-trained nurses in New Zealand who cannot find nursing jobs and it is reported that one in four nursing graduates cannot get jobs.

Most of these nurses will now leave New Zealand with bad memories of what the country promised and what it failed to deliver, and how much the experience personally cost them and their families. All our immigration settings were (& remain) supportive and favourable of their decision to come to NZ to get nursing registration, a nursing job, and then NZ residence. We appreciate that the NZ health sector, in its current state, is probably not the best sector example, but what has transpired could have been avoided with better long-term planning.

The nursing situation applies to other prominent skill shortage areas such as teaching, engineering, and health professionals, which are also on the current Green List. What we really need is better sector research to not only inform what roles should be listed but also how many and when these roles are required. Our current immigration policy settings are too “here and now”. For example, we should be able to plan how many teachers we need, and when they will be needed, and this information should inform our policy settings. If the identified need is for 200 secondary teachers in the next two years, then the policy should aim to achieve this number to best match our actual needs. We should be able to predict population trends, numbers of school-aged children and their levels, and factor in the number of graduating and retiring teachers, to at least get an indication of the teacher shortfall that is needed to be filled by migrant teachers. In addition, international students will also enrol in teaching courses so they can graduate as teachers which they hope will enable them to get a teaching job and then their NZ residence (just like the nurses!).

Ideally, we need immigration policies that are much better at future-proofing New Zealand’s actual skill needs. We must also guard against attracting surplus skills to ensure we always have roles available for New Zealanders and NZ graduates who have these skills. Skills shortages should therefore be quantified with some form of quota and only applied for an appropriate timeframe.

The current boom and bust cycles in New Zealand’s immigration policies create challenges for long-term planning in health, education, and infrastructure. With now declining net migration, and an aging population, the country needs both stable, long-term migration policies to address these “big picture” issues, and well-researched and informed policies that address shorter term skill shortages. Currently we do not have any long-term migration policy settings, and our skill shortage settings are not aligned with our actual needs and, until both these are addressed, we continue with our historical boom and bust cycle and all the fallout this delivers across the country.

Meanwhile, nurses remain on the Green List….