Who wants to live in New Zealand?
Among the 124,000 people who arrived in New Zealand in the year to March 2016 and intended to stay at least a year, by far the biggest group (25,767) were Australians. Next were Indians (13,486) and Britons (13,445). Chinese immigrants came in fourth, with 11,722. Following them were 4000-5500 immigrants from the Philippines, America and Germany.
The 2013 Census revealed that 25.2 per cent of the New Zealand resident population was born overseas. In comparison, among European countries dealing with supposed “floods of immigrants”, the rates are in the teens. Britain has 12.5 per cent and France 11.6 per cent. Italy, the landing place for many refugees fleeing wars in North Africa and the Middle East, has 9.4 per cent. In Hungary, where they’re so terrified of migrants they’ve done their best to keep them all out, the figure is 4.5 per cent.
The most common source country for foreign-born New Zealanders is still Britain, with more than 240,000. China is a distant second, with 89,000. India, Australia, South Africa, Fiji and Samoa all now have 50,000 to 70,000 people born there and now living here.