Its not often I agree with Bernard Hickey, for an economist he spends an awful lot of time on the left hand side of the road if you know what I mean.
Today he will have all the
immigration apologists in a lather as he points out the painfully obvious and shows some true figures instead of the ambiguos dribble being touted by English and Key and regurgitated by the likes of Mike Hosking.
Anyone who claims that these people were needed and aren't simply being brought into the country in an effort to keep wages and conditions low is deluded. Did we really need 400 truck drivers or did we need 400 truck drivers that will drive for the min wage?
"Peters has been on a very high horse about migration, but his main
concern is the astonishing growth in the number of working holiday and
foreign student visas, particularly over the past three years."
The constant banging away at Peters as a racist is a ploy of those that have a vested interest in seeing house prices rise and keeping our lowest paid workers wages to the absolute minimum possible. Peters isn't racist, he's a pragmatist that tells it like it is. But its easy to shut his message down by painting the messenger as a racist.
"Less than 50 per cent of the 72,000 jump in annual net migration since
2012 was driven by these transtasman flows and no one is suggesting
these can or should be stopped.
But that still leaves more than
36,000 extra new migrants over the past year, compared with four years
ago. Who are they, if they're not permanent and high-skilled residents?"
As I said the
other day
"The occupations of working holidaymakers and students able to work here
aren't given, but anyone frequenting the cafes, bars, dairies, Uber cabs
and service stations of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and
Queenstown will have a reasonable idea."
Exactly, you only have to walk into any of these places to be served by someone that can barely speak a word of English or does so with an American accent that when confronted with a word or phrase outside their basic understanding simply fob you off or get a stupid look on their faces or start talking to you like you have a problem with them. These kids are keeping the rates down, living 10 to a room like they always have and stopping other kids (Kiwi ones) and low skilled adults from getting this work and seeing an increase in wages as the supply and demand rule kicks in.
The Government has managed to prevent that by artificially creating a plentiful supply of low skilled workers.
"It [Treasury] released a series of papers over the past year that showed its
growing discomfort with the increase in low-skilled migrants and the
risk that they are displacing local workers and keeping wages down.
"Current
policy settings may not be doing all they can to support the growth of
higher productivity firms and industries, including facilitating the
flow of higher-skilled migrants to sectors of the economy where skill
shortages may be acting as a significant constraint," Treasury officials
said."
And this sent the Mike Hoskings and Bob Jones of the world into a tailspin accusing treasury or racism and playing to the crowd and of not following their masters wishes. Its not treasury's job to pander to the Government its their job to advise the Government. If they don't like or follow that advice well so be it. We voted for them.
"This may have been discouraging some firms from either increasing wages
and working conditions or investing, either in training existing
workforce or in capital," they [Treasury] said."
Really? May have? It bloody well is and anyone with eyes to see can see it.
Hickey continues with this
"Key is right about the pressures on the system and the need for more
houses, but he is wrong about our recent migration patterns making the
country richer. It has made some richer by pushing up land prices in
Auckland and beyond, but it has led to stagnant wage and real GDP growth
and has lumped a big up-front infrastructure bill on to taxpayers in
general and Auckland rate payers in particular."
Multiculturalism doesn't work and mass migration only benefits the migrants. This has always been the case.
It's well past time the tap was turned off.
