New Zealand immigration numbers hit new high

The annual net gain in migrants hit 60,300 in the August year, according to a commentary from Statistics New Zealand.

Separately, the number of visitor arrivals to New Zealand is also a record, up by 8 percent to just over 3 million for the year.

A surge in the number of Chinese arrivals helped drive a record number of overseas visitors to New Zealand last month, the government statistics agency said Monday.

The three biggest source countries in Asia: 12,700 migrants came from India, 8,400 from China and 4,500 from the Philippines.

There were 117,000 migrant arrivals in the year with 57,600 migrant departures. This included a net gain of 200 migrants from Australia – equal to last month’s net gain, which was the highest in over 20 years (since 300 in March 1991).

Statistics New Zealand says of the migrant arrivals, 24,500 were from Australia with two thirds being New Zealand citizens returning.

New Zealand-resident travellers departed on 218,500 overseas trips in August 2015, up 5 percent from August 2014.

“With the New Zealand economy, although we’re anxious about it cooling off somewhat, it’s still looking pretty good compared to a lot of other economies – particularly Australia – and so it’s hard to see these patterns turning around in the near term at least”, Mr Tennent-Brown said.

He says migrants bring skills and capital to New Zealand and the high numbers are a vote of confidence in New Zealand. “The arrangement signed is meant to reduce the vulnerability and potential for exploitation of workers by improving the transparency of recruitment processes and ensuring compliance with both countries’ employment and immigration requirements”, said Woodword.

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