Essential workers leaving Aotearoa for other 'open doors' to residency
Thursday, 16 September 2021
Early childhood teacher Stanley Zhang is considering leaving New Zealand as his fight for residency has left him feeling like “no-one cares”.
Zhang is part of a social group chat of “hundreds” of skilled migrant workers – teachers, nurses and other essential occupations – who are eyeing up places like Canada, where residency is a much more streamlined process with the recent opening of its borders.
“We were part of the team of 5 million in lockdown, and we are needed here. Now though, after lockdown, no-one cares about us,” he said.
“The Government knows it is going to lose skilled workers…where is our future here?”
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Residency applications are prioritised for those earning more than $112,000 or who are in a registered profession like teaching or nursing, or even real estate agents. Other applications can be left languishing for years.
Critics have said the skilled migrant residency process is “flawed”, “cruel”, and the salary-based priority contradicts the fact that highly skilled, but lower paid jobs are what the nation is crying out for.
The Government suspended expressions of interest (EOI) selections for the skilled migrant category (SMC) last year, prompting migrant workers to leave the country to gain residency elsewhere due to delays in processing times.
Zhang and his wife fell in love with New Zealand and its people while on honeymoon in 2016 from China, and he moved here to study early childhood education in August 2019.
He said he was suffering being separated from his wife and young son for so long.
One of his friends, also a teacher, applied for residency in March last year and had still not received a response.
It was a particularly uncertain time for those on work visas set to expire.
“The worst thing is that there is no information, nothing to give us hope, nothing to tell us we won’t be successful so at least we know.”
Immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont said even if EOIs did open back up, it might still take up to three years to gain residency on a priority list.
“These are the people who are giving up and leaving.”
Working with a Canadian law firm arranging Canadian visas, they had 100 applications in 24 hours from frustrated essential workers like nurses, teachers, rest home workers and dairy farmers in Aotearoa.
The “arbitrary” priority list of registered professions included real estate agents, financial advisers and lawyers – “probably the occupations we need the least” – and the criteria did not take into account essential workers who were often in a lower pay stream.
He had seen people miss the wage level by $1000, which pushed their wait time from six months to two years.
“The whole skilled migrant category is completely outdated. It’s simply not fit for really any purpose.”
This was evident by the 40 per cent success rate of appeals lodged to the Immigration Protection Tribunal, he said.
Immigration New Zealand (INZ) border and visa operations general manager Nicola Hogg said the agency was aware of the uncertainty many people were facing, and the Government was considering options for the skilled migrant category.
Demand had “risen signficantly” over the last few years, which had resulted in longer decision times for applicants.
As of September 13, 13,084 skilled migrant and residence from work visa applications needed to be allocated for processing. That included 11,541 for people currently in New Zealand.
“Residence applications take time to process given how much there is at stake and the level of scrutiny required for each application,” she said.
“We appreciate that waiting for significant lengths of time for an application to be processed causes uncertainty in the lives of people who wish to settle in New Zealand more permanently and always look for ways that we can improve our communication with applicants.”
Migrant Workers Association president Anu Kaloti said fast-tracking the residency pathway for people already in the country would benefit INZ, migrants, and the industries that needed them.
“It looks like it’s an effort to reduce the number of people who can stay here permanently. It’s just wrong.”
Green Party immigration spokesman Ricardo Menendez-March said INZ was “constantly shifting the goal post”.
Applications should be considered on the same criteria that was in place when they lodged an expression of interest, he said.
The Government had the power as part of its Covid response to do a blanket granting of residency visas to clear the backlog, then there could be a proper discussion about criteria in future.
“High salary doesn’t necessarily mean high skilled.”