Hilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front.
Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. If you've looked at headlines around the world lately, you'd be forgiven for thinking that immigration is the root of all our problems. Perhaps the most vocal anti immigration critic at the moment is the United States, with mass deportations happening against undocumented migrants. Now, the UK is vowing to fix a broken immigration system with new policies which are estimated to lead to a one hundred thousand drop in
immigration per year by twenty twenty nine. The move comes after the rise of reform UK with a staunch anti immigration policy that has become more mainstream in recent years. So why are a lot of countries turning against immigration and are those concerns valid or passing? Theme today on the Front Page, Massy University Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley is with us to explore the realities and fictions of immigration policy.
So Paul, can you.
Tell me a bit about the UK reforms and what changes might be on the table there?
Yes, the announcement by Kirs Starmer was really interesting. It indicates something of a reversal policy. You must understand that in twenty twenty three the UK experienced a major surgeon migration. Nearly nine hundred thousand people are own and what Starma announced was that he was going to reverse what he called a failed experiment. The paper is called Restoring Control
over the Immigration System. So essentially what they want to do is reduce immigration by about one hundred thousand per year. By the way, the numbers are dropped by about forty percent since that peak and twenty three, so they were already falling, but they want to reduce them by a further one hundred thousand. They're essentially going to tighten the rules. They're going to focus on skilled migrants. They're going to reduce the number of international students that are coming across.
They're going to.
Start particular categories, like there's a lot of international recruitment for social key workers and that's going to be stopped.
So there's a whole lot of things that they're going to do.
But essentially they're going to tighten up the regulations, reduce the numbers, focus more on skilled migrants.
A strategy absolutely central to my plan for change that will finally take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics, our economy and our country. Take back control. Everyone knows that slogan, and everyone knows what it meant on immigration, or at least that's what people thought.
I've seen a commentator calling the move completely untethered from reality.
Would you agree with that?
No, I wouldn't entirely. I think there's a sense in which we need to control immigration, and for a country that has a population as large as the UK's, then migration needs to come in. The thing that always gets me is that when they debate how to manage migration, they look to what they call the Australian system. In fact, it's the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand system, which allocates points to those people that you want to come to your country, so you know, you focus on particular sets
of skills, certain characteristics. The British media and to some extent the British public always react negatively to that possibility, and so it's not appropriate for the UK. I do think there's an element of racism here, and I noticed that Starma has faced quite considerable backlash from his backbenches who say that this is not what labor should be doing, because I think Starma has really tried to undermine some of the support that's been growing for the Reform Party.
But in the meantime, what he's done is really antagonized some of his some of his own MPs.
Well.
The readmission of the English test would point towards a kind of racist aspect, wouldn't it.
Yes, it does.
I mean the thing is whether or not you test people at the border and stop them from coming because they don't have adequate English language competency, or whether that's something that you provide once they arrive. So in the case of Canada, you get a very generous allocation of free English language tuition once you arrive in the country.
So when you you start putting up barriers like that, and when you start using criteria like language, it does tend to suggest that there's a racist element to all of theirs. Now, I don't have a problem with testing on competency and English language competency, but then she shouldn't. The country that's going to accept these skilled migrants also have some responsibility.
I do remember.
Actually, my mum was born in the UK when she was younger and brought over to Australia, and when she finally got her Australian citizenship at the age of I think like forty five or fifty or something, she was terrified of the English language test. It's not just people from other non speaking countries, it's everyone that has to do it. A So the UK move has been influenced by Nigel Faraja's Reform UK Party, which in the last year has emerged as perhaps the main opposition party there
in terms of poll numbers. Anyway, does it seem that anti immigration policy is coming a lot more in the mainstream.
Absolutely, And in twenty twenty four we had what was called the super election year, a lot of elections around the world, and what you noticed in Europe and including in the UK, is the rise and rise of the far right and anti immigrant politics. So you know, you can think of Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, Poland all of these countries saw parties and politicians who, as part of the central policy platform are anti immigrant get support.
So I think it's a particular moment. It's particularly a moment in Europe. But of course we've also seen some very strong anti immigrant politics emerge in the United States.
Under President Trump.
So I just think it's one of those moments when we are seeing quite a strong pushback and concern around what's happening in terms of of immigrants impacting upon an economy or a society.
We're tracking down the illegal alien criminals, we're detaining them, and we are throwing them the hell out of our country. We have no apologies, and we're moving forward very fast. They're very dangerous people, you know. I think my campaign I really focused on the border more than anything else. A lot of people said the biggest thing was inflation and the economy, and then maybe the border was third.
I always thought the border was first because I felt that people could really understand that you can't have people pouring in from the prisons all over the world and from mental institutions all over the world and dumped into our country.
You mentioned the US there, and I mean, obviously that's turned against immigration quite strongly.
Under Donald Trump's regime.
You're reading stories every other day about families being separated by ice, about mass raids in major cities, or people being wrongly deported, notably Kilma Abrego Garci, Yeah, who has been sent to prison in El Salvador, why are countries like the US and the UK so against immigration.
Well, I think it's part of a general anxiety, and I always see an economic dimension to this as well as a cultural dimension. And what you're seeing in Europe is arguments about what's called replacement, which is the idea that somehow non Western, particularly Muslim immigrants are replacing what
you had before they were a threat. But then what you get with particularly people like Oban and Hungary or Trump in America, is you get these very explicit arguments that immigrants equals crime, that when you get immigrants coming into your country, your crime rate goes up, so they demonize immigrants. I do think there's a moment that we're seeing where quite considerable groups within societies see immigrants as a threat, and politicians are reflecting and speaking to that threat.
Housing shortages as well is often blamed on immigrants. You've had that sentiment here as well with the previous governments foreign buyers ban.
Is that really the case?
Yes, it is so.
In New Zealand in twenty twenty three we saw the population grow by two point eight percent, and two point four percent of that came from net migration gains.
So New Zealand had really high as did.
A lot of other countries, but New Zealand had really high net migration. And what you see is that the deficit when it comes to the provision of services and infrastructure, it's greater because the population growth outstrips the ability to provide those services. So what we're seeing is in Europe
the far right beginning to normalize anti immigrant sentiments. But we've also seen less of center governments in Australia, Canada and the UK all announced that they go to reduce the number of immigrants coming into all three countries.
And a key argument, or a key part of what they're.
Doing is that they think that the social license that existed and allowed governments to bring in immigrants is being undermined by the fact that when you're getting significant immigrant arrivals, you know, the provision of housing, the cost of housing, the provision of services like transport or whatever else, and particularly in the major cities, is simply not keeping up
with immigrant arrivals. So we've seen these left of center governments also beginning to harden their approach to immigration and reduce the.
Numbers immigrants, though aren't they often the ones who take up the jobs that people don't want to do. In the UK, for example, into this new proposal, care companies will be prevented from recruiting staff from overseas. But those companies have come out and warned that some services will struggle to survive without those international record So what's the thinking there?
Yes, and I think this is universally the case, so that in New Zealand, for example, a very significant proportion of our eldercare workforce are immigrants, a very significant part of our dairy sector workforce are immigrants. And when you translate that into countries like the UK, and what you see is these whole range of sectors and positions where immigrants absolutely fill essential positions. We're all struggling to get healthcare workers right from the top skill to the people
that help out on the wards. And what you see is this major churn around the world where people recruit immigrants to help and those sectors in the UK, and for example, in nursing, they've got a very significant target for a nurse of recruiting nurses. They're coming from the Philippines, Nigerian and Kenya this year, and I just don't see the alternative.
And I've got.
I don't know whether you're going to ask the Chelsea, but I've got to say that when you look at the evidence, then migrants are a significant net contributor to the economy and to the finances of the country. So on balance, you know, migrants are good. Migrants are good for the economy, they're good for particular sectors. But we're still seeing this pushback in terms of anxiety about migrants taking our jobs.
And I put quotation backs around it.
To be honest with you. Six of the stomach is my opinion. All has always been a darvel s culture. From me growing up, there's been mixed race people yet, so it's nothing to do with skin prejudices. These riots. It's mounted or with race or religion. I think it's just got a point where the British public a six a death of the government prioritizing all the new immigrants that are coming in the contrary over the rom recessions.
Yeah, and if you look at some of those far right parties in Europe, a lot of them are pretty anti Muslim, anti refugee, anti their culture being taken over. I guess how would you place New Zealand in that kind of sentiment.
I don't think it's the same at all, and there are some important differences in terms of immigration. So in most of Europe, the immigrants we're talking about are actually refugees. So in twenty fifteen and again in twenty sixteen, a million over a million people arrived at the borders of various European countries. Australian, Canada, New Zealand target skilled migrants and we use our points system to identify who's going to be appropriate, and we have a very managed immigration system.
Most of Europe does not. I think that there are differences, and I just want to add that when you approve migrants who are skilled, well educated, and in the New Zealand case, they are better educated and sometimes more skilled than the New Zealand population, when you approve them, the outcomes, the settlement outcomes for those migrants tend to be much better.
But of course Europe is dealing with people who are traumatized, who are refugees, very significant numbers of asylum seekers, and of course there are issues around settling those migrants into society. I wouldn't I just think New Zealand and Australia and Canada,
the general approach to migration is much more positive. The way in which we manage migration is very different, and we just don't have those very strong anti immigrant policies we have into immigrant you know communities in New Zealand we have people who are very anxious about but that they don't represent significant parts of our political constituencies.
And do you think that those different sentiments perhaps towards different kinds of tiers of migrants, For examp, I'm thinking whether they're asylum seekers or refugees. I mean Australia still parrots on about boat people, which is a derogatory term. Now, I mean, do you think that there's different feelings towards different types of people entering our country?
Oh?
Absolutely? And the surveys, let's stick with New Zealand. The surveys of New Zealand showed that absolutely.
So.
Refugees are always seen as different from migrants more generally and are seen in a more negative light. People from the UK and to some extent places like South Africa are rated much more positively as migrants that we want compared to those who come from Asia. And unfortunately the migrants from the Pacific tend to be rated as the lowest the least desirable by the New Zealand's is answering
these surveys. So there is a ranking that operates, and definitely people within New Zealand that see migrants quite differently depending upon where they come from, what they look like.
I guess when it comes to the care industry, for example, in nursing, I guess an easy solution would be for those types of companies in those industries to pay people better rather.
Than relying on low wage, low skilled workers. Do you think that will ever happen.
I know, I don't think the economies of particular sectors and organizations allow them to pay a lot better, as much as that would be desirable. I think that's quite an issue, and you see it in hospitality, you can see it in a number of sectors. And of course when you don't have a domestic population that's not keen on the conditions or the pay, then almost inevitably those employers will seek people from overseas to come and work
in their sector. So it's a conundrum and I'm not sure that there's an easy fix to that, And in terms of your question, I don't see any major changes occurring anytime soon. Those companies and those organizations and those sectors will.
Rely on low skilled.
Migrants who are prepared to accept the conditions in pain.
Well.
I know that with the city rail link in Auckland, one of the things that has held that up has been that we rely on foreign workers from the Philippines and the like to work on that, and many of them went home during COVID. So are some of our key industries perhaps over reliant on migrant workers.
Yes, and I think that some of those sectors have realized that. So the IT sector, which is very reliant on immigrant workers coming in the level tuns typically around ten or twelve thousand jobs per year, and what you see is over half of those jobs quite often filled by migrants. And what they've decided is that they need to invest more in terms of local recruitment, local training,
and not rely on migrants. I don't think it's true universally, but for some sectors, I think this is what I would call a sugar rush that you know, there's a easy fix, and you can get it by getting more agrson and it avoids you having to do more work and invest more in terms of recruiting and training local new Zealanders, and the Minister, by the way, has made it fear that there must be much more effort put into recruiting New Zealanders rather than just simply relying on immigrants.
If the answer is immigration, I think probably the wrong questions being asked. I think we do tend in some sectors to be over reliant on immigrants, and that that needs to be looked at quite closely.
Thanks for joining us, Paul, You're welcome.
Thank you, Chelsea.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzadherld dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Seals and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or.
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