The youth wing of New Zealand First made a proposal for an immigration cut at the party’s recent annual convention which passed with overwhelming support.
Young New Zealand First executive committee member Nicholas Wells put forward the policy remit at the right-wing party’s national conference in Hamilton, which opened with a speech by leader Winston Peters and featured conservative Australian senator Jacinta Price as guest of honour.
“We are drowning in immigration … us young New Zealanders, we are struggling to find jobs in the job market, we’ve pretty much given up on owning a house, and house prices are increasing as long as immigration is increasing. The more immigrants we bring into the country, the more demand there is going to be for houses,” Mr Wells said.
“The population as well – enormous. I can’t believe that we’re a country of 5 million currently, especially growing up when it was 3 million.
“We need to introduce a sustainable immigration policy so then we can actually create a future for young New Zealanders, and create a country that is going to become sustainable for the near future and for the extended future, for our grandchildren and beyond.”
WATCH: Young New Zealand First pass a remit at the recent party conference to reduce immigration – the kids are alright! https://t.co/DEuCIkBXVz pic.twitter.com/GtYgYuIrYg
— William McGimpsey (@TheZeitgeistNZ) December 3, 2024
The proposal was met with applause, and only one attendee spoke against the motion, an older man who said: “Sorry Young New Zealand First, not meaning to speak against you but we can’t get anybody to work on farms, that’s the problem.
“I am going to speak against this because we rely heavily on immigration. And believe me now, if we could hire young Kiwis we would, we just cannot.”
YNZF executive committee chairman, Keegan Langeveld then spoke in favour of the motion, pointing out that the proposal focused on reducing immigration that “we don’t need and can’t support” while maintaining a sustainable workforce, and was followed by another supporter of the remit.
“210,000 immigrants came in last year alone,” he said.
“Now that we just can’t sustain. All the situations that we are facing – housing, roading, infrastructure, energy – it all comes back to this one thing, immigration.”
The remit, which read “introduces a sustainable immigration policy focusing on immigration levels of required new skilled and productive migrants per year as reflected in the OECD reports over recent years”, was then put to a vote and passed easily.
YNZF told Noticer News it also proposed another immigration remit: “Investigates adopting a policy to deport those on migrant visas when they commit crimes including migrant exploitation – mirroring Australia’s 501 policy.”
This was amended on the floor to “Investigates adopting a policy to deport those on migrant visas when they commit crimes including migrant exploitation” and also passed.
Census data released in October showed that European New Zealanders now make up less than 56% of the population in 2023, raising concerns they will be a minority by the next survey in 2028.
According to Stats NZ’s data explorer tool for the 2023 Census results, 2,790,354 New Zealanders listed their ethnicity as “European only” out of a total population of 4,993,923, or 55.9%.
This is down from 59.8% in 2018, and 61.4% in 2013, showing a much faster decrease in the past four years. In 1996 the percentage of Europeans was 82.4%, falling to 79.2% in 2001, and 76.7% in 2006.
In 2023 mixed European and Maori people were 8.3% of the population, “Maori only” were 7.3%, Asians were 15.7%, and those from the Pacific were 5.5%. The remainder were other mixes or other ethnicities.
Stats NZ said that Indians were now the third largest ethnic group with 5.8% of the population, followed by Chinese (5.6%), and Samoans (4.3%). Those figures include mixed ethnicities, and include double counts.
The Auckland region is 31.3% Asian and 16.6% Pacific Islander, and was home to 70% of the Korean population and 69.7% of the Chinese population.
Ethnic Maoris increased in every region between 2018 and 2023, and outnumber Europeans 54.8% to 52.4% in Gisborne, while in Tasman and Otago they are 9.9% of the population.
Header image credit: Left, William McGimpsey (X). Right, Young New Zealand First (Facebook).
