By Gurbir Siingh
New Zealand, August 01, 2017: Bowing to the pressure of the local industry and businesses, the New Zealand government has relaxed and made some changes to the temporary migrant worker rules under the Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) residence visa.
NZ Immigration Minister, Michael Woodhouse announced these changes yesterday following an extensive consultation and feedback process with employers and business groups.
Under a plan announced in April this year, the government had proposed changes that would have meant migrants would only count as "skilled" if the job they were coming for paid more than about $48,859 a year.
There was some hue and cry from certain sections of the industry –especially hospitality and dairy farming, who were concerned their industry would suffer for lack of migrant workers.
As a result, the government has now relaxed the remuneration figure for ‘mid-skilled’ to $41,538 a year or 85 per cent of the current New Zealand median income, instead of $48,859 as proposed earlier.
Michael Woodhouse
Making the announcement, Woodhouse said, “This means that any migrant earning below $41,538 a year will be considered lower-skilled and will be subject to the stand down periods. Any migrant earning between $41,538 and $73,299 a year in an occupation classified as ANZSCO Level 1-3 will be considered mid-skilled, and those earning over $73,299 a year will automatically be considered higher-skilled, regardless of their occupation.”
In the previous plan package, there were only two remuneration thresholds - $48,869 and $73,299.
“The new mid-skilled remuneration band recognises the fact that these (migrant) workers are filling genuine skill shortages and are more likely to progress with further skills acquisition or work experience”.
The Minister allayed fears of certain segments of employers that the government wanted to reduce the number of immigrants.
“The changes announced today”, he reassured, “are not designed to reduce the number of migrants coming in on temporary work visas. Employers will continue to be able to employ migrant workers where there are genuine labour or skill shortages”.
The move to drop the salary threshold for medium-skilled workers is likely to benefit 6000-7000 migrants as they now may meet the "mid-skilled" criteria and will not have to leave New Zealand after three years.
The "mid-skilled" category generally includes jobs in farming, hospitality constructions, chefs, retail managers and some others.
The other essential work visa skills changes include a maximum three-year-visa duration for lower-skilled workers, a minimum 12 months stand-down period outside New Zealand before applying for another low-skilled visas and a requirement for partners and children of lower-skilled visa holder to meet requirements in their own right.
According to the NZ Immigration media release, the change will not be applied retrospectively for lower-skilled Essential Skills workers already in New Zealand.
The three year maximum duration will start from the date their next lower-skilled Essential Skills visa is granted after the introduction of the changes to the Essential Skills policy.
All the proposed changes come into effect from 28 August this year.
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Gurbir Singh is a New Zealand-based feature writer & journalist. He can be reached at: gurbir@journalist.com