The council had been seriously looking to attract people who had enough money to support their own businesses and had noticed an increase in those arrivals.
Ms Nixon said the area's GDP last year was among the largest in the country. Its greatest growth had been in the business support sector, which included information technology consultants and general business consultants.
"Anyone who can come in who's self-sustaining in a business sense, we'd be really keen to see."
Those sorts of people would create jobs in the area, she said.
"We've already seen that in some of the small businesses that have started here in the last year or so and are already starting to employ people to expand their operations," she said.
"Those are the sort of things that we'd be looking at, is people who are self-sustaining and people who specifically fit some job shortages that we already currently have."
There were some "odd" job shortages in the area, such as diesel mechanics. One firm had been advertising for nearly a year to fill one of those positions and was starting to look offshore.
Ms Nixon said populations of Filipinos in the area already helped with the honey industry and other immigrant populations assisted with the wine industry.
"We're a province that's geared up to actually provide the support networks around people to come into New Zealand and into the provinces specifically."
It had built up support groups and services over the years to make sure migrants had a good experience.
She believed the whole community was looking at ways it could support new immigrants. It had good schools, training facilities and a good cultural base. The district was keen to get as many new migrants as it could, she said.
Property Brokers regional manager Guy Mordaunt thinks the 30 points could be the difference for migrants planning on coming to the regions.
"Getting those points is tough," he said. "My wife's brother wants to come over, and those 30 points could be the difference between immigrating or not."
His firm deals a lot with British migrants, and other nationalities.
"Lots of them, they tend to be more high-value, high calibre people, a lot older, and moving for the lifestyle.
"We sell a lot of properties to immigrants, but they probably qualify [for a migrant visa] anyway."
Mr Mordaunt thinks the 30 points to the regions will attract the next level down.
"The immigration policy change, it will be the working class immigrants, the people coming over for the better life.
"I think there will be a lot of Asian immigration."
Andy Scott, principal of Professionals Patrick and Scott Real Estate, said they deal with a "trickle" of migrants, mainly British, but it is not the main part of their business.
Interest from Auckland is certainly growing, he said.
"It's lifestylers, people with money, affluent people - they're not coming here for employment."
He said he can see changes with the difficulties in Auckland living. "It's all going to start happening here."
On the less optimistic side, economist Shamubeel Eaqub says the Government is talking about attracting more people to the provinces, though there aren't 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."
However, he believed it was short-sighted to use immigration to fill the gap rather than education and training.
