Floodgates For Immigrants Wide Open

New Zealand First leader Rt Hon Winston Peters says the latest external migration figures show that immigrants are pouring into New Zealand at an increasing rate.

Figures released today show the January 2003 inflow is 30 percent up on December 2002 and nearly 20 percent higher than January last year. Sixty five percent of the migrants to New Zealand in the year to the end of January 2003 were from China, India, Japan and Korea. “This is an astonishing rate of immigration, particularly when most of the new arrivals head to Auckland, creating a huge strain on health, housing, education and transport systems.

“The statistics say that some of the permanent and long term arrivals are students (obviously at the request of the Immigration Minister) yet they do not show any statistical evidence of how many students return home. Without that figure nobody has any idea of what is going on.”

Mr Peters says he wants to know why Statistics New Zealand, for the first time ever, is trying to publicly cloud information in a way that the Minister has in response to repeated questions in Parliament about actual migrant numbers.

“We know that the Minister does not know what is going on but we are alarmed to learn that Statistics New Zealand does not know either.”

Mr Peters says the Government has taken up “people importing” as an economic tool and consumerism in place of sound economic policies that provide jobs and exports for New Zealand.

“This is a very short-sighted and foolish policy that we will bitterly regret in the years to come.”

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