Migrants have a paler look

The proportion of British immigrants coming to New Zealand continues to rise, and they now account for almost a third of new residents.

Of all approvals for permanent residence in the last financial year, 30.8 per cent - 15,045 people - came from Britain.

That is up from 20.9 per cent of all immigrants the previous year, when 8165 people were granted residency from Britain.

In the 1997/98 year, the British accounted for 16.4 per cent of immigrants, comprising 4896 people.

Although proportionately fewer people came from Britain, it was then the largest country of origin for immigrants and remained so until the 2001/02 year when China and India took the lead.

That trend reversed last year.

Immigration Minister Paul Swain released details of the origin of new immigrants yesterday, when issuing the end-of-year immigration statistics.

He said the points system was "colour-blind" and put the changing face of immigration largely down to employers, who issued the job offers that in many cases secured an application approval.

But he conceded that the controversial toughening of English language tests for migrants might have been a factor.

Former Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel introduced the tests in 2002, to cries of racism from some who accused her of responding to anti-Asian sentiment generated by New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.

She has since expressed her "regret" for introducing the tests for some migrant categories. Although Mr Swain has said the tests may be revisited at some stage, there are no current plans to review them.

Green Party immigration spokeswoman Metiria Turei said the large number of British immigrants proved the "race rhetoric of parties like NZ First has been proven incontrovertibly wrong."

She was critical of the low numbers of Pacific migrants and rejected Mr Swain's claim the policy was colour-blind, saying "political racism" had influenced policy development, particularly via the language tests.

The statistics show that despite a plunge in residency applications in 2004, the financial year's target has largely been met.

This followed changes to the points system late last year after it became clear that the late 2003 selection tightening had dissuaded too many potential immigrants from applying.

The initial changes had affected last year's immigration. Numbers slumped to 39,100, well below the 45,000 target.

Mr Swain then proposed to recover the shortfall by increasing the target to 50,000.

The figures out yesterday show 48,815 people were granted residency in the year ending last month.

Of these, 29,826 were approved under the business and skilled migrant categories.

That too meets targets and is a significant improvement on the previous year when the points problems resulted in just 517 approvals in the skilled migrant category.

Mr Peters said the "staggering" figures proved NZ First had been right to challenge the family reunification policy, which accounts for 30 per cent of immigrants.

He also appeared to suggest it justified his focus on non-English speakers. Of the 15045 coming from Britain this year, 12552 were in the skilled/business stream.