More stay at home

By SIMON COLLINS

Just as an influx of immigrants pours into New Zealand, concerns about the brain drain are opening the doors wider to skilled foreigners.

New measures to attract talent are being implemented when the tide has already turned. In the year to October, for the first time in four years, the number of people entering New Zealand intending to stay at least a year exceeded those leaving for at least a year (by 1700 people).

Ignoring their stated intentions, the total number who entered the country exceeded those who left it by an extraordinary 29,700, the biggest net inflow since 1996 and one of the highest net inflows on record.

This particular number may have an isolated peak caused after the events of September 11. It may also flow the other way when the global economy picks up .

A L.E.K Consulting report, The New Zealand Talent Initiative, recommends measures to make it easier for people with jobs to stay here and attract back or use the skills of the 600,000 New Zealanders overseas.

A Treasury analysis shows our immigrants are more "highly skilled" than our emigrants. This is because we select skilled immigrants, whereas Australia takes all-comers from New Zealand because of the free transtasman travel agreement.

Yet there are still reasons for concern. Most obviously, we are losing people to countries that are richer than us, and gaining people only from poorer countries.

Even though it may not show up in the Treasury's statistics, this implies that a hierarchy is operating in what has become a much more integrated global labour market. Crudely, the US can pick the best people in each skill category, and Australia and Europe the next-best, leaving for us only those who can't get into any of those countries.

Of course there are many advantages of living in New Zealand to weigh against the money. But we all know people who have felt forced to take higher-paying work overseas because they needed to pay off a student loan, wanted a more secure job or simply hoped to give their family a decent standard of living and save some money for retirement.

As the Treasury says, another cause for concern is that we are not using the skills of many of our highly skilled immigrants. The unemployment rate for people who had lived here less than a year at the 1996 census was 35 per cent.

Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel has shifted the criteria for entry to place slightly less emphasis on skills and more emphasis on having a job. The new "talent visa" will allow accredited businesses to recruit immigrants without having to prove that they can't find a New Zealander for the job.

Once people are hired on work permits, the new policy will allow them to get permanent residence as long as their jobs "contribute to New Zealand's economic development". The Government is also funding several pilot schemes to help immigrants settle in.