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Many people who emigrate to New Zealand only manage to stay for a few years before moving on, either back to their places of origin or to other countries.

Despite the data given in the misleading ‘satisfaction’ surveys a high proportion of immigrants do leave New Zealand after a few years.

To complement our migrant tales about the immigration experience in New Zealand we thought it would be useful to have some first hand stories of what it’s like to leave New Zealand, taken from locations around the net.

Here’s the first one, it was posted on a commercial emigration forum. The posts tells of how unemigrating is a lot harder than emigrating.

“well, it’s been a while (5 weeks ackshully) – we’re home!

flights from Akl to Man were fine, though frankly, I’m never EVER undertaking such a thing with a 3 year old and an 11 week old again

upon reflection, unemigrating is a hell of a lot harder than emigrating in the first place!

no regrets, but jeez it’s been tough… improving now – we got the keys for somewhere to live at the weekend, and our container turned up yesterday – only 5 (yes FIVE) weeks after leaving Auckland!!

still no jobs for either of us, but it looks like I’ve picked up some contract work from next week… i’ve got an application in for a proper job too, so keeping fingers crossed for that! We’ve done our sums, and it looks likely that OH will be staying at home looking after the little ones for a year or two as I’ve more chance of getting a half-decent job here than he has – he prob needs to retrain, or we need to head to Manchester or London for his work, which we don’t really want to do…

we’ve been staying with various family and friends since we got back – it’s been lovely catching up with everyone, and in many ways like we never left.

The weather has been stunning (specially for cumbria ) and has mostly been sunny and warm. We’ve been out walking most days – a few days after we got back we headed out at half-past stupid (thanks to the jetlag and baby!) and walked round one of the local tarns – it’s surrounded by beech woodland and the colour of the leaves was stunning – we were back in time for the bluebells too, and the smell wafted gently on the breeze…

We really have been wondering why on earth we ever thought we might be able to improve on life somewhere else!

We had a week of euphoria on getting back, then the inevitable crash happened… what have we done? no jobs, no home, two kids aaaargh….

It will get better though – we’ve got a roof over our heads now, and hopefully soon we’ll be able to pay for it too

right, enough rambling! hope you’re all well, and it’s not too chilly down there!

will hopefully have broadband some time next week, so maybe see you again then!”

  1. Jas (aka Greg Barnes)
    September 18, 2011 at 12:37 pm | #1
    | Quote

    “a high proportion of immigrants do leave New Zealand after a few years” – Source please.

    “no jobs, no home”

    Sounds great. Must give up my better paid job and improved standard of living to return to a country racked by rioting, classism and an economy on its knees on the basis of this whole one post you found on the internet. Do you plan on padding out this section with more tales of woe, or possibly change the content to read “Here’s the first ‘and last’ one”?

    Anyway, I’m presuming you are a Kiwi, so if it’s so terrible over here why don’t you take your ample talent to Aussie?

    I’d love to see your reply (if you’re brave enough to publish this!).

    • E2NZ
      September 18, 2011 at 1:27 pm | #2
      | Quote

      This neither the first nor the last last emigration tale we’ve published in this blog. If you took the time to read the site properly you’ll have seen in the link at the top of each page the tab Migrant Tales – Immigrant Stories NZ you’ll see that there are 84 stories in this section, plus some others scattered around the site that weren’t put into the pages chapters

      NZ Department of Labour

      - There is a need to look into why many migrants leave New Zealand after a relatively short period of time.
      - Problems with non-recognition of qualifications need to be addressed.
      - A public education programme is required about the vital contribution of migrants and migrant workers in New Zealand the problems of discrimination against migrants.

      Also read the thread “The Myth of 93% Satisfaction” on Expatexposed.com and look at the PTL departures from New Zealand, it doesn’t take much to see dissatisfaction with New Zealand is reflected in those figures.

      Instead of telling people to take their ample talent to Aussie (NZ Statistics data shows that is what is happening) you should be concerned by how many are leaving New Zealand. The stats are pretty grim, the departures are outweighing the arrivals:

      Annual net migration eased further…

      Annual net PLT migration has eased to 2,900 for the year to July 2011, down significantly from 15,200 for the year to July 2010 driven by rising departures

      Although PLT arrivals rose by 3.4% over the year to July 2011, PLT departures increased strongly from 66,700 to 81,800 (up 22.7%) over the year. A total of 55,300 New Zealanders left the country, up from 41,100 a year ago (up 34.7%). Australia remains the most common destination for departing New Zealanders. A total of 41,500 New Zealanders departed for Australia, up strongly from 27,900 a year ago (up 48.4%).
      Monthly net migration still weak

      On a seasonally adjusted basis, nationwide PLT departures outnumbered PLT arrivals by 200 in July 2011 (Figure 2). Monthly net PLT migration has been negative since March 2011, when departures from Christchurch increased following the February earthquake and aftershocks. In unadjusted terms, there were 4,200 departures to Australia in July, resulting a net loss of 3,200 which was the highest monthly net loss for a July month. There were 800 PLT departures of Christchurch residents in July 2011, up from 500 in July 2010.

      source

      Bear in mind immigrants with NZ citizenship make a proportion of those PLT departures. As far as were are aware no effort has ever been made in NZ to quantify the immigrants who leave the country in this way.

      • P Ray
        September 18, 2011 at 11:57 pm | #3
        | Quote

        People telling others “if you don’t like it, go elsewhere” are working from 2 faulty assumptions:
        1. That the money the person gave to enter NZ will circulate forever in the economy
        2. The skills the person has are easily acquired (the good ole “Kiwi Knack” – I may not have a qualification, but I’m eager and the job can’t be too difficult even if the egghead we kicked out spent years at university learning it).

        That’s okay, living at the end of the world, consequences tend to take longer to hit.
        But that also means… they have way more time to accumulate, ahahahaha…

    • Moonlight
      September 18, 2011 at 1:50 pm | #4
      | Quote

      Well, if you’re “lucky” to have a job, what are you worrying about?…unless you’re suddenly part of the workforce make redundant of course, as it has happened to many kiwis and non-kiwis. So, unless you own a strong business it’s better to keep your mouth shut, who knows, maybe soon you’ll be out there privileged to know what the real NZ is all about!
      Can you enlighten us and say what do you do for a living? that you claim having a higher salary than in the UK sounds a bit suspicious.
      And remember: Karma is a b*tch…

  2. reader
    September 18, 2011 at 3:41 pm | #5
    | Quote

    http://businessblogs.co.nz/2010/03/is-this-why-so-many-people-leave-new-zealand/?utm_source=ch&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=recycle
    “The other warning is for New Zealand companies: there are two reasons New Zealand is losing skills – you pay crap salaries and your managers resent the few people who get paid decent salaries. Pack it in and get over it! It’s small minded and you are pushing out all the people that New Zealand needs – not just the immigrants who get sick of it and go home where they don’t have to put up with it, but born and bred kiwis. More of them leave New Zealand than Immigrants, so it’s not just a bad attitude towards immigrant salaries (though too many of you also con immigrants into taking artificially low salaries because they are immigrants).”

  3. Turner
    September 18, 2011 at 4:04 pm | #6
    | Quote

    This was on TVNZ a couple of days ago
    http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/government-powerless-stop-brain-drain-4403401

    Government powerless to stop the brain drain

    The Government is powerless to stop the ‘brain drain’ of talented New Zealanders heading to Australia according to a visiting academic.

    There are around 600,000 New Zealand citizens living in Australia and the flow of people shows no sign of slowing down, despite the Government trying to make New Zealand a more attractive place to live.

    In the year to July, a net total of 32,600 people moved to Australia, up from 16,500 the year before and higher than a 10-year average of 21,000.

    Keeping talented Kiwis in the country was one of the key pledges in National’s election campaign but the Director of the Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Australian National University, Peter McDonald, told TV ONE’s Breakfast there’s little politicians can do to stop the flow of migrants over the Tasman.

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