Dawn Chorus for Monday, January 8

A flaw in our migration ‘planning’ is the assumption that labour shortages - both in cities and on farms - is temporary, and workers will be able to easily leave once they are no longer needed or are deemed a ‘risk’. Photo: Lynn Grieveson

TL;DR: Two days after Christmas, Immigration NZ ordered a ‘temporary’ dairy farm worker who has built a family in Tokoroa over 10 years on rolling visas to go home because of a risk he might need kidney treatment.

The latest case reported by Corazon Miller at 1News shows how unsustainable and unfair our current migration system has become, given it relies on a delusion that hundreds of thousands of ‘temporary’ workers will go home once a temporary labour shortage is filled, even though many are repeatedly rolled on temporary visas in a no-mans-land of being rebuffed for residency while paying full taxes without rights to welfare, public health services or the ability to buy a home.

Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy this morning:

• New Zealand’s largest bus operator, the private-equity-owned Go Bus group that owns 2,000 buses in NZ Bus, Sky Bus and Johnston’s Coachlines, will be put up for sale this month. AFR-$$$ Street Talk

• Waka Kotahi-NZTA has announced a 10-day stand-down period for driver’s license test attempts after an applicant has failed twice in a day, responding to a massive surge in demand for tests after the previous Government removed resit fees in October to make getting a driver’s license more affordable. RNZ

Full paying subscribers can read and hear more detail in my Dawn Chorus podcast above and below the paywall fold. Join our community of paying subscribers to get access to ‘Hoon’ webinars, our private chat system and be able to comment on articles. Paying subscribers also support the public interest journalism we do at The Kākā on housing affordability, climate emissions and poverty.

The human face of our deluded migration system

Our collective delusion that massively-high migration of workers on temporary visas is only a one-off thing that avoids the need for extra infrastructure to cater for migrant-driven population growth has an awful human cost.

That was illustrated again with a case reported on again by Corazon Miller at 1News last week of Filipino dairy worker, Noland Kinney, who is being forced to leave the country with his family after working on rolling temporary visas for 10 years. Immigration NZ ordered him to leave within six months after discovering he might need kidney treatment. He has a family here with three children that have gone through school in Tokoroa.

Noland Kinney received the news two days after Christmas in a letter from Immigration New Zealand (INZ). 1News first met the Waikato-based dairy farmer two months ago.

Back in October, officials indicated Kinney's chances of staying were slim as he might one day need a kidney transplant, which could impose significant costs on the health system.

But having paid taxes and for private healthcare, the 53-year-old hoped for leniency.

"I've been here for 10 years working hard for my family. It's not about me, it's about my family's future," Kinney said.

With his visa set to expire in six months, he's now pinning his hopes on an appeal to the Immigration Tribunal.

Kinney said, for him, there's no other choice but to keep fighting.

"Everything is here. We don't have a house, we don't have a job if we are sent back to the Philippines, we don't know where to go, I don't have family there." Noland Kinney via Corazon Miller at 1News

National MP Louise Upston and Green MP Ricardo Menendez March have both expressed support for Kinney and his family to stay. Upston wrote a letter to INZ which said his departure would be a "significant loss".

In my view, this case again reflects the flawed way labour shortages are assumed to be temporary and that migrants will be able to easily leave. This policy should be reviewed in tandem with a bipartisan debate and view taken on long-run population growth from migration, which is assumed and forecast to be around 0.5% per annum, but has actually been 1.5% to 2% over the last 20 years.

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Quote of the day

Driving by only using the rear vision mirror

There’s been a disease in New Zealand. We have taken our eye off the future, not just in Auckland, but the nation, in some areas, and particularly in infrastructure. We’re always looking at what we should have been doing years ago.” Auckland Councillor Chris Darby via NZ Herald’s The Front Page podcast.

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Chart of the day

‘According to data from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, just 0.43 per cent of the interconnected lakes was covered with ice on Thursday compared with an average of 10.6 per cent for this time of year over the past half-century. Low ice cover across the world’s largest group of freshwater lakes by area risks triggering knock-on extreme weather effects across the north-eastern US and southern Canada.’ FT-gift

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Cartoon of the day

One way to reduce population growth

Sharon Murdoch via The Press-$$$

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Timeline cleansing nature pic of the day

A butterfly in the grass in Wellington

A butterfly in the grass near Wellington. Grieveson family member for The Kaka

Ka kite ano

Bernard

PS: I’ll publish these occasionally through until January 15, when I’ll resume publication in full. I’m conscious our subscriber numbers stalled last summer when I took a full three weeks off, and they stalled again towards the end of this year as I took a higher share of articles out from behind the paywall. I’ve found regular and frequent posts and podcasts, most of which are behind paywalls, helps keep our community growing. I welcome appeals to open up the particularly public-interestey ones.