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  • New Zealand Listener

    LOST LABOUR

    Aug 15, 2021 9 minutes
    by JANET WILSON

    If anything symbolises the inequities in New Zealand’s immigration policy, it was the revelation that Larry Page, the co-founder of Google who is reputedly worth $166 billion, had been granted residency.

    Page, the world’s sixth-richest person, applied for residency under the Investor Plus category, which means he has to invest $10 million over three years and spend time here before permanent residency is granted.

    The news that he had vaulted up the residency ladder would have come as an added frustration to the thousands of immigrants stuck in stalled residency queues. These are the GPs, teachers, aged-care workers, dairy workers and tech workers – some of whom are losing hope in investing their futures here and returning home. If Page intends to invest in the IT industry in this country, he will have to contend with the fact that it is already short of 10,000 technicians, with more warning they may have to leave.

    Other businesses are desperate for workers to fill thousands of vacant jobs in everything from hospitality, medicine and aged care to horticulture and veterinary services. More than 3000 construction vacancies are being advertised, with twothirds of companies reporting that no one in New Zealand has applied.

    Those who help migrants to gain residency tell of families split apart for years, while employers fret about their staff members’ welfare and worry about losing them.

    At last week’s protest at Parliament of migrant workers separated from their families, Daniel Bredenkand, who

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