Hopes high migrants will head north for trade jobs

Prime Minister John Key has recently announced new measures to draw migrants to the regions. Photo / Michael Cunningham

A Northland recruitment boss hopes new migrants will fill trades roles in the region as well as create new business.

The measures recently announced by Prime Minister John Key will increase bonus points used to calculate whether residency requests should be approved.

Skilled workers who take jobs in the regions will have bonus points increased from an extra 10 to an extra 30 points. Those who set up businesses outside Auckland will be given 40 extra points, double the current 20.

Direction Recruitment manager Paula Kalkhoven said there were many migrants coming into New Zealand but they always seemed to end up in Auckland or Wellington and the regions missed out. She said measures to attract more migrants to the regions were a great idea. The company had placed quite a few migrants in the past.

Ms Kalkhoven said the new migrants could fill trades roles such as welding and engineering. There was a shortage of good quality workers in Northland to fill those types of jobs. She said some Kenyan migrants were successfully running trades businesses in the area and it would be great if more new migrants started businesses and created jobs.

"What Whangarei needs is more business, because there's a lot of people wanting to move up here, but obviously securing jobs and things like that has got to go hand in hand."

But economist Shamubeel Eaqub says the Government is talking about attracting more people to the provinces though there are not enough opportunities in those provincial centres to keep the people already there.

"First you have to create economic opportunity and then the people will go. Just having immigration policy on its own is not going to do very much," he said.

It was unlikely the migrants attracted to the regions by the Government's new measures would take jobs off locals, Mr Eaqub said.

"The fact of the matter is, there is this massive skills mismatch within our provinces as it is."