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Mike's Minute: We must re-think our immigration strategy

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 1 Dec 2020, 11:25AM

Mike's Minute: We must re-think our immigration strategy

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Tue, 1 Dec 2020, 11:25AM

Could it just be we are a bit of a myth? Or our sense of our place in the world is a bit invented?

One of the more interesting reports has arrived this week. It's done by NZIER for the Productivity Commission. It's looked into our policies around attracting highly productive and top shelf migrants. The highly skilled, and the very entrepreneurial.

It's widely accepted that our productivity rate has been hopeless. We don't work smarter, we just make more stuff, using more money.

The call last week from the Helen Clark Foundation was a classic example. It muddled the idea of paying people to do more via a boosted minimum wage, thus improving our productivity. Productivity is not automatically the result of more grunt.

Robots are an example of more productivity. They're better at some stuff than humans. You produce the same thing, just more effectively.

When it comes to migration, we've failed, according to this report, abysmally.

We've brought people in, we all know that. In fact, for some it's been an issue. "They've come in and stolen our jobs, they’ve bought all the houses. These damn foreigners."

Now that they're not here, all of a sudden, the corn doesn’t get picked in the field, and there is an almighty scrap on between the farmers and the government over how to resolve this.

But what that scrap and those numbers actually show, is the picture of our immigration story is we import labour, not brains.

The ones we wanted never arrived. Why? They didn’t want to. So, the idea in our heads that we are the greatest place on Earth, sadly, isn't true. They didn’t want to come, because it's too far away from basically everything.

Our Global Impact Visas created just 114 jobs over 3 years. Just 16 of the recipients raised capital. Two of them more than $5 million, five of them under $10,000.

We have three main sources of low paid labour. Holiday makers, students, and RSE workers. Hardly a stellar programme, is it?

Clearly a complete reset is required. We have deluded ourselves that we are a magnet, a Silicon Valley of the south. We are no such thing, the world isn't gripped by us, and when the truly clever can choose where they want to go, they don’t come here.

It's a tough reality to swallow, but swallow it we must, and reset.

The trick to success is learning from your mistakes. One our bigger ones is thinking we were more than we actually are.

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