How would you define and solve our immigration issues?

Hi skilled specialist must be welcomed in New Zealand. They should be able to get residency(conditional) from overseas. Then, after 2 years they should get PR if they want to. After 2 years of PR they should be offered a citizenship. Obviously, there should be no right for them during this 4 years to claim any benefits, however, this time must be counted for supper as they will pay taxes anyway and invest money in the local economy. Salary levels for PR should be set according to the market average for the position they occupy. 10 years for supper should be enough as there may be specialists in their 50 willing to come to New Zealand.

While immigration is a good short term solution for job shortages, it will make us reliant on the flow of immigrants to keep filling those jobs. It also will increase our population more rapidly which is bad for our natural environment, not to mention that more diversity in our nation is not necessarily a good thing, remember: United we stand, divided we fall”. It will bring political division among ethnic lines and nobody likes to feel replaced.

I fundamentally disagree with TOP’s “NZ first” approach. We need a political party which wants to create a better world, not just a better New Zealand.

We need to acknowledge that NZ is an immigrant country and those wanting to immigrate do so for the same reasons that previous generations did. We should consider ourselves lucky to have been born here, rather than somehow deserving it more than others.

It feels a little eurocentric for me: particularly the part about focussing on targetting Uk, USA, Europe… I feel like a lot of the ‘economic’ refugees working low paid jobs often do have higher education, skills in healthcare, business and technology, however they cannot get industry jobs here (for one reason or another) and end up working any job to get by.


If you really do want to target those who will make this place better, perhaps we need to be a little more culturally tolerant, broadminded, open…

Introducing high net worth immigrants to get quick residency. Remove government benefits for immigrants. Limit numbers of refugees. Setting up task force for them with education based positions

Hi, this is the only issue I have with TOP’s policies. We are living in a world where luck and circumstance play as great a role as hard work and skill in creating success. How is it fair to punish those who have been brought up in less than ideal environments that have resulted in them lacking the skills New Zealand requires? We need to start acting as a global community. The entire world is our responsibility and our policies need to reflect that.

While I see the concerns around immigration, I take issue with some of the barriers being put in place.


If you will, please entertain my personal anecdote a moment -

I am Canadian. I came to New Zealand with my Kiwi husband when his mother died suddenly. Because it was sudden, I entered on a working holiday visa as they’re issued so promptly and I wouldn’t have yet qualified for a partnership visa anyway as we’d lived together just shy of a year.


Since then, I’ve worked here in my profession as a teacher but now am on Maternity leave to take care of my (Kiwi!) son. I’ve been on my resident visa (partnership route) for 15 months and worked for the same length of time.


Under current legislation, choosing to take care of my family does not impede my becoming a permanent resident once my two years of residency are up.


However, being forced to work five years to obtain permanent residency would force people like me to make a hard choice between working to meet requirements or staying home for the benefit of my rightfully New Zealander child. There are plenty of studies that show attention to young children has a massive effect in their later years – a fact I’m very aware of as a primarily school teacher.


I encourage you to consider the potential negative impacts on rightful New Zealand citizens such as my husband and son and to look into whether the five years of work should have exceptions for families.

you twat baskets. “Oh, hello, your country has been torn apart by civil war, but if you can’t make our country a better place, bugger off” what the flub mate??

Refugees. There is a “bigger agenda” going on regarding refugees. The aim , by certain powers,was disrupting Europe and bring division and strife.Europe is changing through refugee intake. Morals or habits of peoples are not the same (yet) and that evolution will take a long time. Support rebuild financially in countries of origin, do not get refugees over here.

I come from Europe originally, I see and understand sadly,why countries become more nationalistic instead of being as open minded as some where. More mosques are opening, churches broken down, now in certain western countries and the call for prayer is allowed to be played aloud! on the street…Xmas is not allowed to be celebrated in school, certain meats are not allowed to be served during meetings..slowly but steadily things from small to big, change.. Western traditions are being pushed back or non stop attacked , to introduce mostly , dare I say it,Muslim way of thinking. Truly. And then people vote to say, we do not want that… “If you come to our country, follow our way of living..you are in our country”…but no, one does not get listened to. You are called a racist. Less safety, often no respect for people and host country..especially troublesome for women, loads of underlying tension. Spitting, and an FU attitude of many sadly. I do see refugees need help, but it has to be in own areas. You mentioned Canada before as an example. Justin Trudeau is in trouble, at the moment. People do NOT agree with the intake anymore. look what is happening in the Northern European countries..mayhem mayhem and unsafe. Do not be silly to suggest intake. Help to actively resettle in country of origin. Wars will be over soon and help is needed then. Look at Kiwi way of life and compare that with traditional muslim living..it does NOT mix. Long way to go still.

Do not overfill this country. Once you loose’ it", it is gone forever.

I don’t believe in the "multicultural " model. Many are sick of this being forced onto them. The mixing of different ethnicities and cultures throughout history has countless times resulted in war. Sadly I feel we will have a clash of cultures and possibly civil war in Europe. It is only a matter of time before we have a terror attack in NZ owing to politicians not putting the care of their own citizens first. And I do feel for people living in abysmal places in the world. Especially the children. Spend my taxes on helping them there. So it’s always going to be a no from me to top on immigration, refugees and tax.

All migrants add value to a nation whether they are dishwashers or computer programmers. A working holiday scheme for more countries would make more sense because it gives people a taste of what NZ is like to live in without the excessive burden of applying for overly complicated visas. I agree on tightening the points scheme or reviewing what is required but you have to remember that NZ as a modern country is founded on migration and any person who is willing to pack up their life as they know it and move away is not a lazy person and they will strive and innovate in ways that many of the incumbent residents will not. Diversity is how evolution of genetics thrives and is also how economies thrive.

Unfortunately this policy feels more xenophobic than I would’ve expected from an ‘evidence-based approach’. Why are we assuming that refugees want to ‘remain near their own country’? How do we know this? Where’s the study this was based on? Why aren’t we welcoming refugees? Have I misunderstood?


Of all of TOP’s policies this is the only one I cannot get behind.

Your policy is reasonably heading the right way. But….I don’t like Gareth Morgan now, I’m sure I won’t like him in the future. I don’t trust him at all. He is the epitome of what coming into large sums of money can do to people. I don’t think he would run New Zealand in a good manner and he definitely wouldn’t listen to the people.

I disagree that we have immigration issues, except where employers exploit immigrants for cheap labour.

I do not see immigration in New Zealand as a problem, I think it works quite well as it is.

fsfsd

“Introduce a public nation-wide register of vacancies and job-seekers so the labour market works more effectively (standard practice in the OECD). The skill shortage list should actually be based on some information about the job market rather than just pressure and lobbying from employers. Then facilitate access to suitable migrants through this facility.”


If it’s for stats only – cool, if it’s for individual jobs/positions – not so cool. Usually employers need employees quickly, so for example being forced to advertise position for certain amount of time before hiring a person from overseas is probably not a good idea.

“PR applicants will need to demonstrate a contribution of at least 5 years paid work in New Zealand (current qualification is 2 years residency only)”


This sounds excessive and is likely to deter people.


Going through visa application process annually is painful, annoying and sort of expensive. It always carries uncertainity for an applicant, causes incoveniences when travelling ("I do know a few people who went throught the following “I am going to visit my family, but my application for work visa extension is in progress, oh well, maybe I’ll see you at work in 3 weeks time if my visa gets approved” ).

I agree with all points of your immigration policy, apart from the missing ‘how many’. I do not wish NZ to grow to 10 million, and I also do not wish our country to be overrun by say 4 million (be it European or Chinese) highly qualified immigrants, leaving the current population at the bottom. And of course, make sure that the infrastructure caters for the increase, something National has gotten wrong in a big way, which I think was one of the big drivers in the housing crisis.

I work in an industry where already it’s deemed sexier to employ anyone from overseas than promote or give a hand up to a NZer . Misplaced and ill informed . Also regions would be hard hit . Simple truth , NZers don’t do meanial monotonous manuel labour

I totally agree, your immigration policy seems too rigid. How do you define who is ‘skilled’, ‘talented’, whatever? These are the type of words that are so vague their meaning is totally dependent on the person who is saying them. Would van Gogh be able to immigrate here under this definition?


When politicians say ‘skilled migrants’ they imply that our shores will be overrun with scientists and philanthropist but what actually washes up are the same old greedy merchants. At least dishwashers aren’t going to put my kid’s rent up.


Humans migrate. That’s the way it has been since the beginning of time. No Government is going to stop it. No Government should try to stop it. The Government just needs to manage it.


All of the other policies from TOP have been innovative and creative; a breath of fresh air. This immigration policy doesn’t offer anything new.


Aotearoa isn’t some exclusive golf club. Everyone is welcome. Just be considerate and don’t make a mess.

Improve our standard of living, otherwise thanks but no thanks? A bit too rigid and unfriendly for my liking. How do you define whether someone has ‘improved living standards’ anyway? One of the so called ‘glorified dishwashers’ may end up being a valuable member of a community, while a genius tech wizard may work away at stuff and never improve anything except their own bank balance.


An immigration policy needs to be more nuanced than this, and allow for people to change over time. The ‘value’ of a potential migrant may be in the little things, like the different perspectives they bring.

I am not against immigration per se, but think we should do it in a measured and considered way.

we cannot keep importing refugees that we then have to support and almost never become fully functioning members of society. At the current rate we can give good support to a few, via the current settlement strategy, not less support to many, as this will give rise to an underclass that will become a problem in the future. Refugee-ism is a knee jerk reaction to terrible situations and we cannot house all the third world. NZ has escaped the worst of the migration problems of Europe and we should not open the floodgates now. There is also the problem of 3rd world problems that follow mass migration eg female circumcision, honour killings, child and forced marriage. Having such a small population means that even small changes in numbers will have a greater effect than in more populous countries. Do not forget that we also have a large population from the Pacific Islands that, although not refugees, need the support and welfare equivalency. I would support greater expenditure to support refugees in camps until they can go home, and to help solve the problems in their countries.

We should also learn the lesson of overseas (UK and Sweden for example ) and restrict migration from Islamic countries, whose culture is totally incompatible with ours.


I believe we should be up-skilling especially young people so we have a well educated and trained population, so that we don’t have the apparent labour shortages that need to be addressed by immigration.

I think immigration generally is a good thing. Obviously we should prioritize high skill labour, but low skill economic migrants deserve a place in NZ too. If research from the US holds true in NZ then low skill migrants mostly compete with other migrants for work, not native born citizens. Plus working holiday visas provide a quintessentially Kiwi experience of living and working abroad, before bringing those skills and experiences back home.

Is immigration an issue at all? I need to see some concrete evidence that immigrants are a drain on the economy. What percentage are “glorified dishwashers” as you claim? Even if this is the case, how is this negatively affecting New Zealand and New Zealanders?


I support all your other policies and want to vote TOP but I’m not sure I can look past this.

I am a 5th generation Kiwi who is married to a Thai Lady who is a NZ citizen , we own 2 Thai restaurants and can not get by without our Thai Chefs and Managers ,they all earn between 38k-50k with free accommodation and board.will i go out of business or can i recruit overseas staff , our problem is a lot of our managers and Chefs were granted PR due to skills shortage , they left shortly after to work in low skilled jobs , there should be a 2 step process to PR where they need to work say 5 years in there area of skills before being granted Permanent residency , if you can find staff please sent to me

Saying that refugees “mainly want to go home” is a bit of a generalisation. Most refugees today, including the many coming out of the Middle East, are escaping religious and ethnic persecution which makes their homelands unviable to live in. Didn’t realise we were going to begin having the same immigration stance as wonderful Oz.

Your refugee policy is cruel and miserly. New Zealand takes in disgracefully few refugees in total, per capita be damned. Compared to, for example, the Defence white paper asking for twenty billion dollars for the military over twenty years (which I am unsure if you have a defined stance on) refugee resettlement programs are cost effective for governments, promote a sense of universality of humanity and a common sense of decency and respect for one’s fellow person, something disturbingly lack in contemporary political discourse in Aotearoa. Furthermore, humanitarian programs like our refugee program allow New Zealand to stand up for fundamental human rights and dignity in the foreign policy arena, allowing us to promote global co-operation on resolving the conflicts and security threats, such as global unrest and climate change, and other humanitarian disasters that drive refugees to flee their homelands, and to promote the rights of the civilian populaces who are the innocent victims of circumstances outside of their control.

A middle-of-the-road refugee policy based on the per-capita intake, without even a word of condemnation for the violation of international humanitarian principles by the Australian government attempts to stay neutral on a moving train as it rides towards the divisiveness, xenophobia and racism that is tearing our world apart.

I am disturbed that a party claiming to have values can show such indifference and apathy towards the desperation and suffering of refugees