Winston Peters will take some satisfaction from the fact that he has successfully ‘regained’ one-upmanship among all political parties in the fray for the next elections on extolling anti-immigrant sentiments.
For long Mr Peters had enjoyed an unchallenged sway on this constituency of fermenting anti-immigration sentiments.
Lately, this unchallenged position had been facing some stiff competition from all main political parties including the National and the Labour Party simply because experience overseas have shown that anti-immigration sentiments win elections.
Seemingly, Mr Peters was not creating much furore to attract enough attention of voters.
Now, the man has got a chance to make some noise on anti-immigration, and he does it with a style and aplomb that we can only expect from Winston Peters – attacking the ethnicity of New Zealand Herald journalists alongside their argument that maximum Work Visas arrivals have not come from Asia.
Although, New Zealand Herald have done well in rebutting Mr Peter’s personal attack on the ethnicity of their journalists, still, Herald will have to concede the fact that they have contributed in some way in adding venom to the current anti-immigration narrative.
Now the narrative is not just about “anti-immigration” but is about the “Asian immigrants.”
Untill now, the main political parties have been carefully avoiding this trap and keeping the narrative around, for and against, the value of “low-skilled migrant workers” for New Zealand economy and society.
National Party had been carefully orchestrating immigration policies since September last year, in anticipation of next elections, effectively closing doors of immigration in the preparation of what could be a record fourth successive term in government.
The recent-most changes announced by the Immigration Minister last week in Queenstown about quelling the number of migrants on “low-skilled” work visa – the latest scapegoat of rising anti-immigrant sentiments have come even after Prime Minister Bill English had earlier commented in February this year that some local Kiwis were unemployable because of “drugs.”
At that time, it was assumed that the National Party would hold its ground on their public statement about un-employability of some local kiwi-workers and therefore the value that migrant workers bring in the areas of low-skilled jobs and would go into elections without any further tweaking of immigration policies.
However, within a short span of two months, the Party came to an ‘eclectic understanding’ that it was not enough to be in a winnable position in this election particularly, without being seen publically opposed to “low-skilled migrant workers,” who are conveniently believed to dislodge local kiwi-workers and hence not welcome anymore in New Zealand.
The government’s proposal of new income threshold of $49,000 to be considered eligible for Skilled Migration Category (SMC) migration route is clearly designed to eliminate those seemingly large numbers of low-skilled migrant workers who have become new ‘acne’ in public eyes purely because of their visibility in public eyes.
Not to be left behind the Labour Party is not satisfied with this measure and is calling for cutting down “tens of thousands of immigrants from coming to this country,” without any suggestion of accurate numbers that they would allow in a Labour government. Their tirade is also against the highly visible and now dispensable “low-skilled migrant workers.” Clearly, Labour party has also been stepping up the ante on anti-immigration.
However, in this race to the election, few things are conveniently ignored by all stakeholders in the anti-immigration debate, about the value that low-skilled workers could bring to strengthen an economy.
Last year, this conventional wisdom that workers with lower skills are a drag on the economy was challenged by a Harvard University Economics Professor Dale Jorgenson who argued that absence of low-skilled workers from an economy could be holding back economic growth.
The working paper was titled Education, Participation, and the Revival of U.S. Economic Growth co-written by Professor Jorgenson along with researcher Mun Ho of Washington, D.C.-based think tank Resources for the Future and Jon D. Samuels, a research economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis and published by National Bureau of Economic Research.
Although the working paper examines the drivers of U.S. economic growth from 1947 through 2014, there could be some learning for our New Zealand economy as well.
The paper had found that productivity, often assumed to be a major factor in growing the economy, has actually accounted for only about 20 percent of economic growth since the end of World War II. A much larger share—80 percent—came from investment in capital and equipment and from a “growing labour force.”
The paper argues that as the economy grows and the service sector expands, the low-skilled workers will once again become in higher demand. Thus essentially establishing a link between the fact that low-skilled workers being in demand in an economy is a sign of growing economy especially of the service sector.
Many Kiwis would take a trip to their memory lanes and recall that late night petrol station, dairy stores, restaurants and others businesses in the service industry, which largely thrives on the so-called "low-skilled migrant workers," were not a common sight in Auckland, as they are now.
Not everything about “low-skilled migrant workers” is as bad as is made to believe in the current anti-immigration narrative.