25,000 guests? – Of course, come right this way.
Martinborough had its twice annual Rotary fair last weekend, and for the first time in a while the Wairarapa delivered decent weather. So rather than donning galoshers and a storm coat, we headed out in shorts, t-shirt & a lather of sun block.
The first time we went was exciting and an early start – a two hour drive from Wellington to get there before many of the crowds, so that we could get a BBQ’d steak sandwich breakfast and not have to park in Featherston.
We have a slightly more relaxed approach to the fair these days. It’s still a special breakfast at home in the morning, but now only a 15 minute drive to our side of town. You can tell there’s something special happening in Martinborough, on account of seeing more than three other vehicles on the road as you drive there.
Still I get the impression the fair is unofficially starting earlier & earlier each year. I was over hearing someone in a café during the week say they intended to be there by 7:00am, and be all done before 8:30am so they could go home and have breakfast. If it gets any earlier, they’ll have to turn it into a Christmas fair. By 2pm some stall holders were packing up. While that’s not a surprise from the food stalls who have run out of stuff to cook or sell, it was a surprise for other stalls. You might have thought they had something more important to get to, like the rugby sevens back in Wellington.
The fair is less crowded of an afternoon. It’s hot, it’s dry, the pub beckons, as does the beach, the wineries, the ice cream stall or anywhere with air conditioning really. So it’s easier wandering around all the stalls in the afternoon. You can tell some of the stall holders are wilting a little though, as you politely cough and they wake up from an afternoon nap in the deckchairs. Which is perfectly fine, since by the time we get home, it’s either time for a nap ourselves, or a dive in the pool to cool off. All told it took about three hours to work our way round everything. I tend to walk around the event in circles (well, squares actually), since the whole town centre is symmetrical and I just can’t get my sense of direction stable. Circles is less confusing.
There’s normally something new to discover, so this years hot tips are;
‘home made’ fudge (looking identical & in identical packaging, so I don’t know whose home it came from!) is out. Only three stalls selling it this year instead of the 50 there seemed to be last year.
Hats are still in – of course. But then I’m of the ‘I have a hat and one head, how many more hats do I need?’ school of thought.
The BNZ bank has really good air conditioning – although they’re only open until lunch time for you to get cash out.
The (small) supermarket doesn’t jack up its prices because it’s fair weekend. Unlike many of the cafés who charge an extra 15% – 20%. Still, given that it was Waitangi day and Bank Holiday surcharges apply I don’t think they won quite so much this year.
We’ll be back next weekend, time to sample some new local wines in the village winery. We’ll park in the square, take all of ten minutes to visit every open shop, and just appreciate how nice it can be to wander round Martinborough on it’s usual tranquil day.
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Only in New Zealand: The Prime Minister auctions a doodle.
To cut a long and very complex story short – the Flag of New Zealand is always a topic of argument and occasional news, because it contains a Union Jack and some people hate to be reminded of a colonial past. So John Key, our Prime Minister went on Breakfast TV this morning and doodled his preferred alternative. Its supposed to be a Silver Fern by the way: 
And it is now being auctioned on Trade Me to raise money for charity.
How cool is that?
Can you imagine Gordon Brown doing that?
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The life and times of a Swimming Pool
Pools- lovely to look, but you have to clean them if you want to use them. Not that we have used ours this year yet – because the summer has been a very long way away.
This is how it starts off at the end of winter. The water is slightly green, murky and full of leaves (even with a pool cover you can’t quite stop all the leaves getting in).
So the first step is to dump some Chlorine in to get rid of the green murk.
But this still has crud in the bottom – so a bot of hoovering, filtering and backwashing is in order:
And then you end up with a clean sparkly pool all ready to play in:
With water the most stunning colour in the sunlight:
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Well I never: An interesting Immigration report
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, Life in New Zealand, NZIS & Immigration issues
So fair play, reading through the two reports from Dept. of Labour has actually been interesting. Well written, with conclusions and recommendations, not just dry statistical facts.
Something interesting from INZ/DoL for a change. Whatever next, Winston Peter’s as Immigration Minister? - Well stranger things have happened!
Seriously, the two reports;
International Migration Outlook & Migration Trends & Outlook sound similar – and to be honest there really isnt much difference (but hey – its waste some extra tax money writing 2 reports instead of one.)
Both are well written, and for a change have dozens of citations. So you can actually check where they are getting some of their facts from, and that they aren’t lying through their teeth. I was pleasantly surprised to find most of the cited reports are publicly available too. So you can read & draw your own conclusions.
Anyhow, interesting things/facts/observations from the IMO;
23% of NZ’s resident population as of June 2009 were not born here – and that number has been going up. Here’s a table showing where that 23% came from;
If you look at the ‘working age population’ that 23% turns into 25%.
This means that more migrants are staying in NZ longer, it’s now only 24 leavers for every 100 new migrants during the 2001-2006 period. Which, as we’ve mentioned earlier, is actually showing more loyalty to their new home than the 40%-ish of Kiwi’s who leave.
The employment numbers are a little worrying;
Unemployment rates for immigrants are about 3% above the national average. Perhaps not surprising with plenty of migrants coming in as Skilled Migrants or on Work To Residence without job offers.
New migrants are paid $10k-$15k less than their previously resident Kiwi colleagues.For performing comparable work
And it ‘only’ takes 15 years for that gap to close! 
15 years! OMG, you gotta be kidding? Come to NZ, take a huge pay cut, and if you’re lucky, you’ll earn the same as your colleague in a mere 15 years. humpfhh.
Still this may have something to do with another finding. That there was no evidence from another Dept. of Labour report that migrants were choosing to settle in an area which had higher than national average salaries, or lower than national average unemployment. i.e. new migrants weren’t actually picking the geographical area’s with fewer people having the in demand skills. hmm, perhaps we were just a little strange that way. We came to Wellington because the pay is better and its where the demand is – mostly because its where the government is. Most migrants still gravitate to Auckland, where the wages are lower and house prices are higher. Take note!
Wowing an potential employer at interview is going to do you a lot better than hoping that ‘averages’ will mean you get a better salary. Clearly some of this report points to studies showing that isn’t the case and you’ll get less than the average of your new Kiwi colleagues.
Time to brush up the interview skills.
Of course if you bring kids over with you when you migrate, then they don’t have to work to close that 15 year gap. The study showed that 18 year olds entering the work place faced no discrimination over salary whether they were Kiwi born & bred, or had arrived the day before their 18th birthday. So that’s reassuring.
There is also a (brief) section on the economic impacts of immigration. Only based on one study mind you. Basically, immigrants are good for the economy. In ‘productive’ terms;
- Migrants bring cash which they spend (really?! – you don’t say),
- Pay more in taxes to Govt. than they draw in benefits (shock horror, migrants aren’t here to sponge off the state!)
- Migrants reduce production costs (read as: are forced to accept lower wages)
- Improve the competitiveness of NZ goods & Services, which helps exports. (same as above really)
So I’m not so sure that this study really does justice to the ‘immigrant’ contribution to the NZ economy. I wonder if they actually asked migrants what their ‘contribution’ was?
A Royal rugby team?
There’s a couple of curious coincidences that happened in the last few weeks which gave me a startling idea this afternoon.
- A few weeks ago I happened to be walking past the Intercontinental hotel when Prince William came out and drove off to do his childrens ward hospital visit. There were some crowds outside the hotel. And to be fair, more crowds at the hospital.
- Then yesterday I happened to be walking to the bank, and there was the rugby seven’s parade working it’s way down Willis St. There were some crowds along (both sides of) the street, (round the corner, up the road, back along two other streets and filling civic square).
“So what?” you may think.
A republican minded Green MP has got his private members bill randomly selected for consideration in parliament. This private bill is to hold a full referendum on whether NZ should become a Republic, and cut the last remaining Govt. & Monarchy links with the UK. We would no longer hold allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II of New Zealand. {Is it just me, or do the Greens have no Green policies? Their major contributions to NZ politics in the last few years; A Republic referendum bill, anti-smacking legislation & a ‘Buy Kiwi made’ advertising campaign}.
Anyway.
This bill proposes more than one Republican option, and if they’ve learnt anything from the failed attempts of the republican movement in Australia years ago, they will have a bit more sense about wording the question. And think very carefully about the options they give us to choose from.
Next to this, there is a debate about changing the NZ flag. So all this is being talked about a lot. Something along the lines of ‘Look how well Canada has done with a new flag, showing it’s maturity and responsibility’. A bit like a teenager getting a hair cut & colour in rebellion against stuffy old parents.
But anyway.
What occurred to me was, if the Monarchy don’t want NZ to go republic, they need to form a rugby team.
huh!? you may be thinking.
And take part in the sevens tournament. Or indeed any rugby match taking place up and down the country or oversea’s where NZ is playing – just so long as they don’t always beat the NZ team.
double huh!?
It’s no surprise to hear that rugby is popular here, and if you want to win popularity you need to appeal to the people. By this point you’re probably thinking, ‘what’s he going on about’.
Well look at the crowd pulling power involved here;
Prince William (who likes rugby!), makes his first official visit to NZ. Look at the crowds;
While of course the Police were keeping people away from the hotel lobby, the crowd is standing in the middle of this picture, and there’s lots of empty space around. I’ve seen more people waiting for the first thing in the morning train on a Monday in sleepy Carterton. And that’s at 5:45am.
Compare & Contrast with – The rugby sevens teams, who visit every year, and will be here again next year;
Yes, okay, there’s some empty space in civic square, but look below at the roads outside and people queueing to get in;
&
.
So my theory is, if the Royal’s want greater popular appeal and keep NZ aligned with the British monarchy – they need to form a rugby team.
{ssshh, don’t tell anyone, but it’s 9pm on a Friday evening, we’ve got the opening match of the seven’s playing and yes, I’m writing a blog. ssshh, we don’t follow the rugby}
Former Head of INZ gets a measly $10,000 fine.
Seriously – what is wrong with these people???
The former head of New Zealand Immigration – a person who used her position to get residency for her family members when they were not entitled to it - does a deal and faces a fine of a poxy $10,000 and 100 hours community service. And that’s just for lying about whether she had a PhD or not.
She will not face any penalty for abusing her position, and her family members are allowed to stay in New Zealand. She will not face any penalty for fraud.
I just don’t get it.
How can someone who was the Head of a government department get a $10,000 fine for doing what she did, and yet the fine for giving free immigration advice on this blog is set at ten times that amount – or jail time.
There is something very wrong with this scenario. Once again – someone in INZ does something wrong and their punishment is basically a smack on the wrist with a wet paper towel.
Apparently – the damage to her “reputation” is seen as enough of a punishment.
I disagree.
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Stars
We were in Wellington last night, I looked out the window around 11pm and was most surprised.
To see stars.
Not something I’d expected when in the middle of the CBD. My feeling was very much encapsulated by the phrase “OMG, it’s full of stars”.
Most cities I’ve been in over the years have no real night sky, since it’s all drowned out by light pollution. So seeing the stars last night was a pleasant surprise.
Fascinating numbers
Filed under: For the numpties amongst us, Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, NZIS & Immigration issues
Well, okay, perhaps not for a lot of people. However, I’m one of those sick puppies (meow) who finds spreadsheets and numbers quite fascinating when they tell you something interesting.
So much to my surprise, we found at the weekend that Immigration now have a statistics page on their website. Seems to have been there for a while too. So kudos to INZ for releasing the information as part of open Govt.
So what can these numbers tell us?
Well for starters download the Excel files, since you can play with the numbers. Thankfully someone at INZ knows how to use Excel and has created lots of pivot tables – yippee. Although they’ve not created enough graphs I think. Graphics, pictures, we need to see more coloured lines.
So, if you really want to find out how many parents, originally resident in the UK made an application for NZ residency, via the London branch in a random month anytime in the last 14 years – you can! Download R6 – Residence applications accepted for processing.
Want to know how many of those people applying got approved or declined? – Download R2 Residence decisions by month.
Of course, it may have been too simple to put all those numbers into a single spreadsheet. Still, the info is there.
So you can indeed see how many people applied from each coutry, broken down by month, and which stream, whether they were primary or secondary applicants, and whether they got accepted or not. There’s loads more statistical info buried in them thar’ numbers, so I may start coming out with interesting factoids. Personally, I’m interested to see if anyone from a ‘first world’ country managed to get into NZ via the ‘humanitarian’ stream – normally reserved for refugee’s of the non-economic variety.
Of course more really interesting stuff is buried in R8 – Residence applications on hand. INZ talk a lot about having a large workload, lots of decisions to make etc. Which they do. How much of a workload is this? Well take a look at R8, these are all the applications that people have made to come to NZ. Whether or not INZ have even started working on the application or not. One of the few graphis provided in the three noted sheets is below, ranging from July 2000 on the left through to January 2010 on the right. {you can click on the image to load it full size}
Uncapped family sponsorship (non-Kiwi family of Kiwi citizens) has grown steadly since 2000 from approx 3,000 to almost 7,000 per year.
Parent & Adult sibling capped family sponsorship applications have gone from ~4,500 to ~10,500 – with no change in the number of places made available. And anyone wonders why there’s a queue?
For a big wow!, the Business/Skilled migrant stream peaked at a queue of ~51,500 applications at the end of 2002.. Dunno what happened there, but I’m sure gonna go find out.
Stay tuned for more (possibly useless) interesting factoids.
Family Sponsorship: The 2 year wait Update.
Finally we got around to sitting down with an excel spreadsheet, calculator, enormous amounts of coffee and a chocolate bar or two and crunched some numbers on Family Sponsorship.
The problem is that people are being told there is an 18 months to 2-year wait before a case officer is assigned. INZ have even put a news item up on their website about it.
Timeframes for Family Capped Applications
Thursday, 26 November 2009
New Zealand carefully plans allocation of permanent residence places.
The Government’s annual residence programme gives priority to skilled and business migrants and the partners of returning New Zealanders. The family capped stream (which comprises parent, adult child and sibling residence cases) is currently allocated 4,950 – 5500 places per year. Demand for these places currently exceeds supply.
There is a current waiting time of 18 -24 months for a place to become available within the cap. In practice this means that an application will usually take from 18-24 months from the time of lodgement to be allocated to a case officer for assessment.
On top of the three years you have to wait before you are eligible to sponsor your parents (and then even longer if like us you have a sibling you want to sponsor) it is becoming incredibly traumatic for people.
So – we have tried to see what is going on by looking at the fortnightly stats that come out with the Skilled Migrant EOI selections. Although this has nothing to do with Family Sponsorship – at the bottom of each PDF file is a little box which gives the numbers of applications currently being looked at. The numbers cumulate over the year, and reset in July – the end of the year for Immigration purposes.
This is total and utter bollocks. The queue is simply because the staff at INZ have been told to hold back applications until they get to the head of a “queue” in applications. It has absolutely nothing to do with the number of spaces available. The number of spaces is renewed each year. Are INZ suggesting that we should go and kill a couple of NZers to free us some space for our families.???
I think I may have been wrong!
I think what I actually should have said is thati t is a piss-poor attempt at an explanation because it make no sense whatsoever. But having actually looked at the numbers – I think I know what they were trying to say – but failed miserably.
So – what do the numbers really tell us?
1. By the end of January, 2454 of the maximum 5500 spaces have been allocated.
2. This leaves 3046 spaces that can be filled by the end of June (55% of the allocation is free with 5 months to go.)
3. INZ are processing on average 224 people each fortnight. (Starting with 12.8.09 -declines + acceptances)
4. Even with this being done – the number of people in the queue is increasing by an average of 75 people every fortnight.
5. Basically this means that there are about 300 people applying, and 224 decisions being made.
6. Only one fortnight have INZ actually managed to process more applications than came in.
7. Most depressingly – despite the huge overdemand for spaces – INZ let in just 41 people over its minimum allowance for this policy last year.
8. They could have allowed an extra 509 people to join thier families last year – those spaces are gone – they do not get rolled over into the next year allocation.
Now – how can you work out when you family should (very roughly speaking) get processed and get a decision?
See the highlighted line above? My Brother is one of those 131 people that entered the queue.
1. You need to know how many people were in the queue ahead of your family. (9897)
2. Take away how many applications people have been processed since then. (People declined + people accepted = 2459)
3. Which leaves 7438 people that need to be processed before my brother.
4. Work out how many fortnights that should take if they process an average of 224 people a fortnight (33 fortnights)
5. Get a strong drink.
Basically this means that from now – all else going well – we can expect to get a decision on my brothers application in 66 weeks, or about 15 months time. And he has already been in the queue for 6 months – giving a total of 21 months for the process.
And it’s just going to get worse.
The fact is that INZ are right in saying that more people are applying than there are spaces. They just utterly screwed up the explanation and have left people dazed and scared. There are “spaces”. There’s 3046 left this year! But there are 10,000 people waiting for them, and more lining up every week. Even if no one put in an application for the next 12 months, and INZ accepted everyone in the queue – that still accounts for 2 full years worth of spaces sitting in the pile right now.
You are not actually waiting for a space to become available as such – but you do have to wait in line till INZ have decided on all the cases that went in before you. In some ways I think what INZ have done in forcing the applications to be handled in turn is making the situation fairer -it’s not then a lottery about which branch you use or which case officer works faster. I just think they need to be more honest and clear about what is happening and why. (They can pay me to write their news items for a start!).
Please note: we have no way of knowing if this is the true reflection of what is happening. Please feel free to have a go at working through the numbers – and tell me if you get a different answer. The only way to know for definite what is going on would be to have an inside track at INZ – and we don’t. Working through the publicly available info probably won’t tell us everything – but hopefully it will help some of you to see WHY the wait is so long.
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Squandering skills
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, Jobs & Work
The Herald on Sunday today had a small article in their Career10 section, about how the ‘in demand’ skills of migrants are being squandered – or rather being ignored in the first place. [Sorry, no online copy that I can find]
It’s an all round in-offensive article that doesn’t really go anywhere. However it does provide a couple of useful pointers;
1. There is a mentoring scheme called OMEGA running for new migrants who don’t have a job yet. Only it’s limited to Auckland. Ho hum..
Still, OMEGA has the right idea, and it’s better than nothing. They run a number of different scheme’s to help new emigrants link up with employers and get some experience, understanding and knowledge of the Kiwi workplace.
I’m not familiar with OMEGA, more reading to come, so I’m not in a position to endorse it as such. They are there though, and in place to help new migrants. Something that’s rare and very welcome.
2. Kiwi employers tend to give preference in jobs to people they know. This is something we’ve mentioned previously, and the general thing is that most NZ cities are so small, anyone knows pretty much everyone else, or is related to them. {For example, a German migrant friend of ours was appearing in a Terry Pratchett play being put on by a local amateur dramatic society. We went. It was good, I talk about this to a colleague at work the next day. His aunt was playing one of the lead witches. It just works like that.}
Since many Kiwi companies are (relatively) small, they are indeed interviewing someone as if to invite them to join their family. They want to have confidence you will fit in with everyone else. Rather than being particular on exactly which industry certifications you’ve got in the last few years. Of course the down side is that if you’re new to the country, you wont know many people. And many people wont know you.
While you first job may not be ideal, it gets you working, bring money in, and starts to get you connected with others in the industry. This is when the whole ‘contacts’ and knowing people kicks in.
So my take? Don’t worry that much about not knowing people from the start, it’ll happen once you’re working and your next job can be that ideal one it would be great to land.
Which is exactly where OMEGA can fit in, helping people start even if it’s just a stepping stone to the job that really spins your wheels.
