STEPPING INTO OUR FUTURE

• Published date: 29 May 2021
• Publication title: Mix, The

Covid-19 gave Max Gutry the unexpected gift of six weeks’ work in Central Otago.

This past summer found the 19-year-old Dunedin student living out of a tent with friends in a Millers Flat camping ground. He worked long days in the summer sun thinning apple trees in a Roxburgh orchard, took new steps towards independence and saved a bit of money for his second year at university. It was work he would never have contemplated if it had not been for the sudden flight of foreign backpackers and other migrant workers when the global pandemic closed borders.

Looking back, Gutry says it was a novel and rewarding experience. Looking forward, as a member of the Gen-Z generation, it is highly unlikely this will be his last unexpected job.

Tej Prakash donned protective gear and went to work every day throughout the Covid lockdown. The 33-year-old permanent resident, who came to New Zealand with his wife in 2014, trained as a physiotherapist in India but works in aged care here. He is one of the huge number of migrant workers who sustain New Zealand’s elderly care workforce; a sector wondering what its future is now that the Government has announced an ‘‘immigration reset’’.

For the present, the lack of willing Kiwi workers means Prakash has no shortage of work. What would make his and his children’s future so much sweeter here would be the proximity and support of extended family. Tragically, last month, even while Prakash was caring for elderly New Zealanders, his father caught and succumbed to Covid, in India.

Distinguished Prof Paul Spoonley is talking by phone as he travels through rural Hawkes Bay. A much-awarded sociologist and researcher specialising in immigration, he pulls ideas and facts out of the air at will — until the phone loses reception, his voice momentarily stutters and the line fills with silent static.

It is an apt image for the effect the Covid-19 global pandemic has had on migration to New Zealand. For much of the John Key years, and for the first three years of Jacinda Ardern’s prime ministership, visitors and migrants were the fuel in the country’s economic engine. Up until March, 2020, more than seven million people were arriving in New Zealand each year. Among them, on average, 88,000 permanent or long-term working-age migrants. That was almost half as many again as the number of school leavers entering the workforce each year. It created plenty of jobs, soaked up myriad vacancies, added valuable cultural colour but did nothing for productivity. It also added to the enormous upward pressure on house prices and the downward pressure on wages and skills.

Then it suddenly ceased.

Covid came and the border slammed shut.

Suddenly, net annual migration was 6600, compared with 91,000 the previous year.

And then, last week, the Government announced that the tap would not be turned on again — not as wide anyway. An ‘‘immigration reset’’ would see the migrant flow recalibrated and reduced, particularly for those...