Keith Rankin Analysis – Post-Covid Immigration to New Zealand by Nationality

Analysis by Keith Rankin.

An increasing proportion of New Zealand’s immigrants are foreign citizens. In the 2010s – especially the later 2010s – a critical driver of immigration had been returning New Zealand citizens. As the headlines have indicated, that process of sourcing immigrants from the New Zealand diaspora has long finished.

Where have New Zealand’s post-covid immigrants come from? The following table shows immigration from the 31 countries which Statistics New Zealand follows. The estimates for the years-ended-August have just been released.

We note that not all intended migrations to New Zealand are successful. Most immigrants arrive on non-residence visas, and then have to apply for permanent residence or other long-stay visas. Unsuccessful immigrations arise both from failures to secure the desired permission, or from immigrants themselves having second thoughts. There are two possible outcomes of unsuccessful immigration: return migration, or onward migration.

Onward migration may take place following immigrants’ success in gaining New Zealand passports. But that is not unsuccessful immigration, and it’s not shown here. The data below looks at the 12-month period ending August 2023, and deducts the migrant departures for each nationality in the following 12 months (ending August 2024). For comparison, the table also shows 12-month period ending August 2024, deducting the migrant departures for each nationality in the 12 months ending August 2025.

These data are estimates for successful immigration (as defined above) by migrants’ nationalities:

It turns out that Philippines is the 2023 ‘winner’. Philippines consistently has few return or onward migrants. We note that the Philippines’ number dropped more in 2024 compared to India, probably reflecting the larger numbers of Indian migrants who arrived as tertiary students.

Two other stand-out immigrant countries – relative to their source populations – are Sri Lanka and Nepal.

The dominant groups of countries are our Pacific neighbours (Oceania); and South and East Asia. In this context we should note that a substantial majority of immigrants from Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia are ethnic ‘Austronesians’, the same broad ethnic group as our indigenous Māori and most of our Oceanian immigrants. Immigrants from Philippines are a particularly good fit, because of their similar Christian culture and because they are ethnic cousins of indigenous Aotearoans.

That’s not to say that any other national group is a bad fit. Most of our immigrants seek to integrate sufficiently to become Kiwis, without being under pressure to assimilate into Euro-Kiwi norms. Interestingly, of the six top immigrant-source countries, New Zealand only has direct flights with two: China and Fiji.

We note that the richer Asian nations feature well down the list. And we note the disproportionately low representation of nationalities with mainly Muslim populations. Indonesia, with 2½ times the population of Philippines has only 2½ percent of the Philippines’ successful immigration. Indonesia, our near-invisible near-neighbour, is the fourth most populous country in the world, and may well have more people than the United States by 2050.

With slightly more immigrants than from Indonesia is Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous country, and a country with strong sporting links to New Zealand. But Pakistan is way below India in the above table. A surprising omission from the table is Bangladesh, the world’s eighth most populous country, with more residents than Russia (the world’s number nine). Bangladesh does have a significant community in New Zealand, including my GP doctor. I suspect that Bangladeshis feature strongly in the ‘other Asia’ category, along with Cambodians who continue to operate small bakeries in Aotearoa New Zealand. Another country of importance missing from the list is Singapore, whose airline does bring many if not most of our South Asian immigrants.

Other countries not mentioned so far in the world’s top-ten by population are Brazil, Nigeria, and Mexico. Of these only Brazil features in the table above, although Nigeria may well have a significant presence in ‘other’, and Mexico has had some high-profile immigrants to Aotearoa New Zealand. Brazilian immigration, which appears to be dropping off, may return once China Eastern commences flights from Auckland to Buenos Aires.

We see the richer countries in Europe and the Americas (traditional sources of immigration), and Australia, feature in the bottom half of the ‘Top-31′; much more so for 2024 than for 2023. We note that the negative numbers in 2024 mean that more people with those countries’ passports departed in 2025 than arrived in 2024.

Ukraine doesn’t feature, though it might be a major part of ‘other Europe’. Czechia, which I am surprised Stats NZ have included, may be taken as a proxy for Eastern Europe. Also, ‘other Africa’ has held up while South African successful immigration has halved.

The data all reinforces the fact that New Zealand is a demographic turnover country, with the momentum of immigration coming from much poorer non-Muslim countries, and with a significant outflow of richer-country migrants.

For some up-to-date perspective, the table below shows estimated immigration for the featured countries in the year to August 2025. It shows an increase in migrant arrivals from some richer countries, such as United States, Australia, Japan, Germany and France; however, it is likely that similar numbers of these nationalities will leave New Zealand in the next 12 months as arrived in the previous 12 months. Many from France will actually be from New Caledonia; from Oceania rather than from Europe.

Finally, total arrivals of foreigner immigrants were 201,950 in the year to August 2023; 142,661 in the year to August 2024; and 112,591 in the year to August 2025; much lower than immediately post-covid, but still high. Total departures of foreigner immigrants were 35,972 in the year to August 2023; 46,099 in the year to August 2024; and 54,092 in the year to August 2025.

So, in the last year, foreigner migrant departures from New Zealand had reached almost half of foreigner migrant arrivals. This suggests that, for many, immigration to New Zealand is a fraught and often unsuccessful experience.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.