Annual immigration smashes record, approaching 130,000

Tuesday, 12 December 2023

Net immigration hit a new record of 128,900 in the year to the end of October, according to the latest estimate from Stats NZ.

That was despite its estimate that the net number of New Zealand citizens leaving the country also hit a new record of 44,500 over the year.

The estimated population gain from net migration over the 12-month period is slightly larger than the entire population of Dunedin, as recorded by Stats NZ in the 2018 census.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Monday that net immigration at the previous annual estimate of 118,800 for the year to September was “not sustainable” and that immigration controls had swung from being too restrictive to too loose under the former government.

There were now “not enough checks and balances”, Luxon said.

“We want skilled workers to come here, but we've got to make sure that is linked up to an economic agenda where we have genuine skill shortages,” he said.

Luxon signalled concerns about the country’s ability to cope with the influx, saying the immigration agenda also needed to be very strongly linked to “infrastructure in New Zealand.”

The movement of New Zealand citizens to and from the country is outside the government’s direct control in normal times.

But Immigration Minister Erica Stanford had been having conversations with Immigration NZ to make sure “we actually have some rigour in the application of inviting migrants into this country”, Luxon said.

Despite the new annual record, Stats NZ’s monthly data suggests the annual migration number is likely to start falling very soon without any government intervention, if it didn’t already fall in the year to November.

It estimates monthly net migration peaked at 14,653 in the month of March and declined to 9329 in October.

However, its past monthly data is subject to revisions for more than a year.

Stats NZ counts someone as an immigrant if it thinks they are going to spend at least 12 months out of the next 16 months living here.

Similarly, it classifies someone as having emigrated if it thinks they are going to spend more than 12 out of the next 16 months out of the country.

That means students and tourists travelling to and from New Zealand on working holiday visas can be included in the numbers, alongside people making intending a more permanent move.

Stats NZ uses a machine-learning tool to forecast whether people who have crossed the border are likely to have done so for more than a year.

It bases its predictions on factors such as the length of time they have stayed or been away, the type of visa they have travelled on, their country of citizenship, and their age.