Job initiative helping more Pacific people
5:00AM Thursday March 15, 2007
By Angela Gregory
The New Zealand Herald
Pacific Island people are increasingly getting the opportunity to live in New Zealand without having to rely on relatives already here to jack them up with jobs which they often don't get or don't keep.
Research into Tongan and Fijian communities by Professor John Gibson, principal investigator of the Pacific-New Zealand Migration Study, has shown that employer visits to island countries are counting more in determining who gets to come here.
Professor Gibson said a survey had shown that the percentage of Tongan migrants who got job offers in New Zealand though a relative had halved since changes were made to the Pacific Island access category in late 2004.
Among the job-related changes was an initiative by the Immigration Service to help arrange employer visits to Pacific countries to recruit workers.
Before those changes 74 per cent of the Tongan migrants had received their initial job offer through a relative.
Since then, however, only 36 per cent of migrants did.
