UK Labour votes against NZ style immigration policy

The Guardian reports:

The government’s controversial immigration bill was voted through the House of Commons on Monday night amid Labour claims that it will alienate many key workers who have risked their lives during the coronavirus pandemic.

With a Tory majority of 80, it passed easily by 351 votes to 252, a majority of 99, and will now go on to further parliamentary scrutiny. …

The bill follows the promise of an “Australian-style points-based system” first outlined by Johnson and Michael Gove during the 2016 referendum.

The system used by New Zealand and Australia is about as good as it gets. It is massively superior to US policy such as green card lotteries or current UK policy.

Basically you score points on various criteria and the total number of points needed can vary to reflect whether you want to have greater or fewer migrants. The key thing is that it doesn’t care about your national or race – it cares about whether you’ll likely be an economic asset to NZ, rather than a burden.

In NZ you currently need 100 points. You can get them by:

• Age (5 points if 50 – 55 to 30 points if 20 – 39)
• Job offer – 50 points
• Qualifications – 30 points for L3-6 to 70 points if L9-10
• Skilled work experience – 10 to 50 points
• Work experience in are of skills shortage – 10 to 15 points

Our system is not perfect and always need tweaking but it is a good model and glad to see the UK adopting it.