Competing for skills: migration policies and trends in New Zealand and Australia

• Lesleyanne Hawthorne
• Department of Labour

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19 August 2011Global comparisons of skilled migration outcomes are rare, given the inherent challenges in securing matched data. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides an invaluable annual scan through its International Migration Outlook series. Detail is limited, however, given the need to include 31 nations characterised by highly variable levels of information.

Australia has made a unique investment in longitudinal migration research in the past 18 years, in a process since replicated by the New Zealand and Canadian Governments. Commencing with a pilot survey in 1992, the Longitudinal Survey on Immigrants to Australia (LSIA) has been administered three times (in 1993– 95, 1999–2000 and 2005–06), to a representative sample of primary and secondary applicants. In LSIA 1 and 2 in-depth interviews were conducted at 6 months (wave 1) and 18 months (wave 2) that focused on immigrants selected through the Skilled, Family, and Humanitarian Categories (extended to a wave 3 interview in LSIA 1). For LSIA 3 a shorter mailout survey was administered at 6 months followed by a telephone interview at 18 months (excluding humanitarian entrants, who were separately surveyed). Australia has made this investment in longitudinal migration research to improve policy formation, in particular to ensure decisions are informed by migrants’ early employment and settlement experiences.

Canada replicated Australia’s longitudinal survey in 2000–01, developing a variant of the LSIA entitled the Longitudinal Survey on Immigrants to Canada (LSIC). This survey yielded highly comparable data. In 2004, Lesleyanne Hawthorne was commissioned by the Canadian Government to undertake a detailed comparison of skilled migration to Canada and Australia in the previous decade, defining key policy trends and outcomes through an analysis of the 2001 census in both countries compared with LSIA 2 and LSIC longitudinal data on skilled migrants (1999–2001).

New Zealand developed its variant of the LSIA in 2004 – the Longitudinal Immigration Survey: New Zealand (LisNZ). Three waves of data have since been secured. While Australia moved to a paper-based survey of 10,000 migrants in 2005 (LSIA 3), New Zealand affirmed Australia’s initial preference to collect extensive interview-based data, based on a random sample of 12,202 migrants at 6 months (wave 1), with follow-up interviews conducted at 18 months (wave 2) and 36 months (wave 3).