Should New Zealand have an emergency fund for Migrants?
Filed under: Cost of living, Getting to New Zealand, NZIS & Immigration issues
One of the two families in the news lately over losing jobs and having to go home, had now left New Zealand. Having paid $11,000 to a licensed “Immigration Advisor” (and I use the term loosely) – it seems they too had little money to get home, and had nowhere to stay. Hmm, I hope the Immigration Advisors Authority has read about this and looks into whether this advisor followed the code of conduct.
Everyone but the father has now been repatriated back to Germany – it sounds like the local List MP helped them out. (If Only our list MP had been so useful – he couldn’t have given a toss!)
There are also calls (unsurprisingly from opposition MP’s who need a political stick), to set up a fund to help Migrants in need. I can’t help but think this is just wrong on so many counts. For a start I am offended that an opposition MP who oversaw a catalogue of problems within NZIS and did sod all about it, now claims to have Migrants best interests at heart. The hypocrisy is nauseating.
The impact of the recession on temporary and permanent migrants occurred in a way not anticipated by us or them when they came here,” [Jim Anderton] said. “They came here on advice, so we can’t then blame them when things go wrong.”
The problem with this – while nice – is that what happens to the migrants that just don’t settle here and go home? Do they get their flights back paid for them as well? You see it’s not just the recession that forces people to go home. Given that net migration figures are always ridiculously low (there are however no figures on how many of the ones that leave are migrants as opposed to Kiwis) – if the New Zealand government helped out every migrant who –for whatever reason – had to leave it would simply be unaffordable.
And to be honest – I really do think we need to accept that there are no guarantees that it will work out for us here. We need to be prepared for the fact that we may need to leave, and it should be up to us to have the emergency fund to get ourselves home. Even if you have a Permanent Residency Visa, can you afford to stay here without a job? We had been here over 4 years and were citizens, when it was looking highly dubious that Hubby would get to keep his job. Added to that – it was looking very likely that the Family Residence Team in London would do everything in its power to ensure that my family did not join us. There were many days when we had to look at what we do if we had to go back. The cost to us would have been phenomenal. We did however have emergency funds to deal with loss of income, and we could have got flights home. Dealing with our properties however would have been horrendous.
There is simply no way of knowing till you move here and live here how you will settle, and there is always the risk that your job may not work out. You need to have funds to live on or get home and you need to have a plan. I also wonder how many people moving from the UK to New Zealand would be happy if the UK government did the same for it’s migrant population. I doubt it would be many.
Please ensure you fully understand the costs involved in emigrating to New Zealand, and if you sell a house in the UK – keep some of the money back to cover situations like this. It can happen to any of us, and it does not happen simply because we are in a recession – that just makes it more likely and more newsworthy.
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Related posts:
- Why do you need an emergency fund?
- How many Migrants leave New Zealand?
- Wehey! We Don’t Need to dip into our Emergency Fund after all!
Comments
8 Comments on Should New Zealand have an emergency fund for Migrants?
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Hubby on
Sun, 12th Jul 2009 7:30 pm
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Avalon on
Mon, 13th Jul 2009 4:54 pm
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Wiliam on
Mon, 13th Jul 2009 7:55 pm
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Avalon on
Mon, 13th Jul 2009 9:50 pm
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William Knight on
Tue, 14th Jul 2009 4:53 pm
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Avalon on
Thu, 16th Jul 2009 7:15 pm
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Emergency Funds on
Wed, 29th Jul 2009 4:51 pm
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Avalon on
Wed, 29th Jul 2009 10:16 pm
To quote someone wiser than me “there is no one true path to emigrating”.
I do find it amazing the number of migrants who are here only on work visas – my heart goes out to them, I just don’t understand why they’ve not applied for residency if they have points from work, education or experience.
I accept INZ should give people on a work permit a reasonable amount of time to find a new job if made redundant. As temporary residents there are no benefits or welfare offered. It’s a risk people take, and we just can’t be responsible for everyone’s unfortunate circumstances. After all – this is precisely what many folks in the UK are indeed upset by with (legal) European migrants in the UK.
I’m helping (in an entirely not an immigration advisor way) a few colleagues in exactly this predicament. It’s always their choice to stay or not, I just wish that it were only their choice without being forced into leaving by INZ or their employers pulling the plug.
Ah – we just know too much about Immigration 
When does “helping friends” become “giving advice”. The crux here is whether it is systemic or not. Does that mean we have to have a system – or that we do it regularly?
Bottom line – everyone answering questions on the Immigration Forums either needs to stop or be registered. The forums and blogs are NOT exempt from this law.
What a balls-up.
It must be “systematically regular”, can your advice/help be predicted by a system?
lol
Good post, Avalon.
On a serious point though, while immigrants and work-permit holders can never know exactly how things will work out, the govt. does encourage both, and needs both.
If you have paid taxes here, I think it is fair you should get some back if the worst should happen and you need to go home.
But maybe this should be paid for through some sort of state-sponsored insurance scheme. A small levy on the PR/visa application costs!
(I Know, I know, they’re already expensive, but I’m just floating the idea).
Oooh – you might actually have me there. I was about to say that you shouldnt be able to get your taxes back – then realised that was a compltely numpty for me to suggest – being rather keen on paying as little tax as (legally) possible!
Migrants actually can claim a tax refund if they dont stay here a full year (in the same way that we can do it when we leave the UK) because they may have overpaid – but that isnt what you are talking about here (its just something I thought of). I think whatever people feel is fair, we have to ask ourselves if we would also think it fair if migrants back home got the same benefits from our government.
On the government encouraging people – ive always thought we should be able to sue New Zealand for misrepresation in advertising with it’s whole “100% Pure” marketing plan, and Stats NZ for producing misleading pamphlets which portray New Zealand as a cheap place to live. Surely it should come under advertising standards 
But the wine is cheap…. see
http://www.thisnewzealandlife.com/2009/07/new-zealand-wine-bargains.html
As long as you don’t mind drinking plonk that is. (And I don’t)
Plonk is fine
And while the wine is cheap – its so bloody gorgeous I drink way more of it than I ever used to back in the UK. I have to budget for it
There is a great possibility of unexpected expenses for which you should keep some money as emergency fund. Post is giving great detailed knowledge regarding emergency fund, it will help the people who is having some less idea about it.
Emergency Funds links to a rather good post about (funnily enough) emergency funds. It actually pretty much what I would say -in fact Ive said it – but it never hurts to see that I’m not the only person.
Cheers for sharing
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