Restaurateur: Skills shortage the target
Chand Sahrawat and her husband, Sid, employ about 40 staff across their two award-winning Auckland restaurants, Sidart and Cassia.
About half are foreigners and she and others in hospitality had real concerns the National Government’s proposed toughening of immigration settings would lead to many restaurants having to shut their doors for lack of staff.
After pushback from a number of industries the Government softened the changes, and Sahrawat said she was now confident she will be able to retain staff.
“In hospitality we have a skills shortage for any of the jobs, be it front of house or back of house.”
She would like to see immigration settings set industry-by-industry, to better target new arrivals to skill shortages. On Labour and NZ First’s promises to significantly reduce net migration, Sahrawat said her attitude would depend on where exactly such reductions came from.
“It is quite necessary to have [the debate], because it is getting a little bit out of hand. But at the same time, we just need to be mindful of which industries need immigration. Do we need 150 Uber drivers? We don’t, possibly . . . I think we need to build more infrastructure to cope with immigration.” fail drug tests. NZ First leader Winston Peters has vowed to drastically reduce net immigration well below what Labour wants, to a net migration level of around 10,000 a year.
Unemployed Kiwis will be trained up to take jobs as the tap is turned down, Peters says.
His message to voters who want a big drop in immigration levels is that Labour can’t be trusted, given they had only recently called for sizeable cuts, and National will continue the “economic treason” of “mass immigration”.
The Green Party had proposed capping migration at 1 per cent of population growth, but later abandoned that policy, with leader James Shaw saying he was “mortified” at accusations by migrant groups that the Greens had pandered to antiimmigrant rhetoric.
Act and United Future have both criticised proposals to cut immigration as reactionary. The Opportunities Party (TOP) wants to overhaul the system so immigration isn’t driven by student visas or reciprocal visitor working visas, and scrap the need for highlyskilled migrants to have a job to come to.
National last year announced that New Zealand’s annual refugee quota would rise from 750 to 1000 in 2018 — the first increase since 1976.
The Greens want the quota increased to 4000 within six years, with an additional 1000 taken by NGOs. Labour wants the quota to hit 1500 over three years.
HWatch the video interview at nzherald.co.nz