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.

The following tables represent an update of mortality by sex in relation to Table 2 from Decennial Increases in Deaths by Birth Cohort, in Aotearoa New Zealand.

By looking at deaths registered in February to May only, it is possible to extend trends into 2025, avoiding fluctuations arising from winter illnesses.

The numbers look at people born over a ten-year period and the percentage increase in deaths in a given recent year compared to ten-years earlier. I am most interested in the ‘generations’ born between 1935 and 1990. The oldest generation/cohort shown will not have many more deaths than ten years earlier, because more than half have already died before the age of ninety. For younger generations, only a small minority have already died, meaning that a population can be readily compared with its younger self.

Results are unreliable for people under 25, because too few of them die to reveal any patterns.

Typically, at least for working-age adults – defining working age here to mean about 25 to about 75 – a birth cohort will normally have about 100% more deaths in a given year (eg 2020) compared to ten years previously. We can see that in the Male table below, by looking at the 2010-2020 column, and by looking at the 1935-45+ row.

If we look at the first highlighted figure of 98.3%, it means that 98.3% more men born from 1945 to 1954 died in 2020 than in 2010. The next figure in that row says that 100.2% more men born from 1946 to 1955 died in 2021 than in 2011. The last figure for that row says that 119.4% more men born from 1950 to 1959 died in 2025 than in 2015. (Noting again, that these data are for February to May only.)

This decade we have observed some problematic increases in deaths for men born between 1955 and 1980. (I would rate any number over 120% as ‘problematic’.)

For Females, these increases in death numbers over ten years for a generation/cohort are even more concerning; though it remains true that fewer working-age females are dying than working-age males. It’s more that women are catching up to men. As with men, it is those women born between 1955 and 1980 where the greatest concern lies.

While I’ll leave these data for others to interpret further, the numbers tend to bely the mantra we hear from the finance industry and many politicians that “we are all living longer”. The aging process seems to be coming earlier for people born after 1955 than for people born before that year. (It’s too early to say whether this conclusion about ‘Gen-X’ will also apply to ‘Gen-Y’. While Gen-Y men, born after 1975, seem to be doing OK so far, data for Gen-Y females is not looking too good.)

A final point to note is that Aotearoa’s working-age population is particularly affected by immigration and emigration. The numbers given here will be distorted if, for any cohort within that ten-year period of comparison, there was a marked difference in emigration compared to immigration. We should note, however, that both immigrants and emigrants (to and from Aotearoa New Zealand) tend to be healthier than average for their birth cohorts. Thus, data of this type – which does not rely on population denominators – can reveal subtle truths which may otherwise remain hidden.

Ultimately, societal problems – such as inequality, insecure housing, over- and under-work – all do have an impact on average lifespan at least as much (if not more) than the state of a country’s healthcare services. Actuarial methods of measuring lifespan are lagging indicators of the health of a national population. And they can be problematic in this country, because so many people who will die in New Zealand were not born here; and vice versa.

My tables are forward-looking rather than backward-looking. They warn of trouble ahead, especially in relation to those people born in the 1970s and 1980s. We may note the following: What researchers suspect may be fuelling cancer among millennials (Washington Post article, published in NZ Herald on 30 September 2025).

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Data is from Statistics New Zealand, Births and deaths: Year ended June 2025. That data series only begins in 2010.

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.

Yesterday I listened to RNZ’s political commentators. The principal topic was an aspect of the recently released May 2025 international migration. Kathryn Ryan starts by reminding us of the “old saying, would the last person to leave New Zealand please turn out the lights” (a saying which has been used in places other than Godzone).

The latest figure for net immigration was an inflow of 14,800; a net gain. But you wouldn’t have realised this. Ryan went on to say there’s a big migration outflow underway right now. And she’s correct if you only count New Zealand citizens. (Non-NZ citizens are people too; indeed, in that timeframe, 53,400 non-NZ citizens emigrated!)

Kathryn Ryan said there was a net loss of 30,000. There was actually a (provisional) net loss of 46,300 NZ citizens. (Possibly she – or her producer – had subtracted the all-migrant net inflow from the net loss of New Zealand citizens, having interpreted the overall 14,800 net inflow as a net inflow of non-NZ citizens.) In fact, this 46,300 net loss of NZ citizens was offset by a net gain of 61,100 non-NZ citizens.

(We should also note that total arrivals – not just people classified as ‘immigrants’ – in the year to May 2025 exceeded total departures by 3,797; less than the 14,800 ascribed to net international migration. The sum of total net arrivals in the six years to May 2025 was 244,000; an average of 40,000 per year.)

The total number of people who featured (in the period from June 2024 to May 2025) as either immigrants or emigrants was 264,000; that is, a number of people equivalent to five percent of New Zealand’s total population featured as either a permanent arrival or a permanent departure. This 264,000 includes 114,500 “migrant arrivals of non-NZ citizens”. Half of the 114,500 estimated permanent arrivals of non-NZ citizens were citizens of either India, China, Philippines or Sri Lanka.

In addition to getting the numbers wrong, a key problem with the framing of the RNZ migration discussion is that it rendered invisible these citizens of Asian countries; as people of Asian birth have been largely invisible in our intense discussions in recent years on binationalism. This gaze aversion by the political class is a kind of passive or casual racism. It is ethnicism to simply ignore the new New Zealanders who provide so much of our labour, and who generally perform their labour roles with professionalism and competence.

An important aspect of this problem is to ignore the ‘mammoth in the room’, that there is in Aotearoa New Zealand a substantial substitution of New Zealand born residents for non-New Zealand born residents; white citizens are leaving, brown denizens are arriving. In these latest statistics, for the year to May, there were 61,100 more new New Zealanders and 46,300 fewer old New Zealanders; 61,100 minus -46,300 equals 107,400. 100,000 is two percent of five million.

So, if 70% of New Zealand residents were NZ-born in May 2024, then about 68% of New Zealand residents will have been NZ-born in May 2025. (Just under 30 percent of New Zealanders were born overseas in March 2023, according to Statistics New Zealand.) The rate of ‘replacement’ is probably not quite that great, in that some of the citizens leaving permanently will have been naturalised rather than born in Aotearoa New Zealand. Another complicating factor is natural population growth – the excess of births over deaths – which was just over 20,000 in 2024. It would appear that about one-third of births in New Zealand (maybe more) are to mothers not themselves born in New Zealand.

Population ‘Replacement’ is a sensitive subject. The ‘far right’ in much of the Eurocentric world indulges in ‘replacement theory’, a conspiracy theory that there is a liberal “elite” (sometimes “Jewish”) agenda to replace ‘whites’ with ‘non-whites’. (There used to be a comparable case on the ‘far-left’, whereby ‘globalisation’ was interpreted as an agenda rather than a description.) The descriptive reality of today’s world is that there are disproportionately more – and substantially so – ‘brown’ and ‘black’ young people than their proportion among older age cohorts.

White people are diminishing, and non-white people are increasing in numbers. That’s not a problem. But it is perceived as a problem by many white people, especially disadvantaged white people in the economically polarised Euro world. If we tip-toe around this issue of changing global ethnic proportions, we leave the field to ‘replacement theory’ conspiracy theorists. We need to have adult conversations about the implications not just of aging populations, but also the re-culturation of our populations through demographic change.

Applying this last matter to Aotearoa New Zealand, a nation state with rapid population turnover, the overall national ‘personality’ can be largely retained so long as immigrants come from a wide range of other countries. When I was in Sydney last year, I heard a story about the emergence of India’s ‘caste system’ in Australia. This is the kind of cultural change that we do not want in New Zealand; such cultural colonisation can be averted by avoiding too much immigration from a single country. And through a process of cultural fusion, rather than either assimilation or the emergence of cultural silos.

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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.

Until late 2018, New Zealand’s immigration statistics have been woefully inadequate. While it has always been possible to keep taps on the total number of people in the country – through births, deaths, and net international passenger movements – ‘official’ net immigration numbers have long been calculated by stated intentions (as on arrival and departure cards) rather than by actual outcomes.

For statistical purposes, immigrants are people who arrive in New Zealand, and stay for at least 12 months without leaving the country.

For recent history, actual outcomes have been ascertained by matching arrivals and departures (through passports, not self-declared passenger data). For 2018 new arrivals, the numbers of people expected to stay in New Zealand for more than a year have been estimated using information associated with their visa. For 2018 recurrent arrivals, their likelihood of staying at least 12 months is estimated from a travel history of at least 16‑months.

https://www.stats.govt.nz/assets/Reports/Defining-migrants-using-travel-histories-and-the-12-16-month-rule/defining-migrants-using-travel-histories-and-12-16-month-rule.pdf

Immigration statistics have been recalculated from 2015, using this new method. The chart shows 2015‑17 annual average long‑term arrivals (total blue), 2015‑17 annual average long‑term departures (light blue), with annual average 2015‑17 net migration in dark blue.

The equivalent 2018 data is shown in red.

The data in the chart is categorised by nationality (country of citizenship), and excludes New Zealand citizens. (For New Zealand citizens net immigration is negative. This is partly because some immigrants acquire New Zealand citizenship, and later depart as New Zealand citizens. It is also because New Zealand has always been a country of emigration as well as a country of immigration.)

The most important feature of the chart is that, while gross immigration has changed little (though with increases from Europe, the Americas, and Africa), departures of immigrants have increased markedly. The result is a significant overall fall in the net immigration of foreign citizens.

The places with the least return migration are Philippines, Pacific countries, and Africa (especially South Africa). These are the most obvious cases of economic migration, where immigrants are largely content with life in New Zealand. These are also the countries from which most immigrants seek New Zealand citizenship; so when they leave they are more likely to leave as New Zealand citizens.

In the middle are countries with high numbers of international students – China, India, South (including Southeast) Asia –  reflecting the ambivalent immigration status of international students. These are also countries whose middle-class residents have aspired to hold alternative national residencies while never quite leaving their countries of origin. Tellingly, however, China is showing substantially more return migration than previously. It is coming to look more like the richer countries of Asia (North-East Asia) and the English‑speaking developed countries, with the highest levels of return migration.

For these economically‑advanced countries, a major driver of return migration will be dissatisfaction – much of that due to inflated initial expectations of life in New Zealand. There will also be a considerable amount of churn associated with a rich anglo middle‑class who see themselves more as citizens of the world than as citizens of a particular country. These are heavily globalised people, for whom traditional concepts of international migration do not apply. Their migration patterns are driven as much by the ever‑cheaper price of air travel, facilitating a transience (eg home‑ownership in multiple countries) and consumerism that imposes a high environmental footprint on the world.

Finally, there is an increasing category of lifestyle refugees – suggested from European and American data. These are people – mainly social liberals – driven by fears of environmental disaster and of political populism; and probably in part unspoken concerns about how immigration in their home countries has changed many of their cities. Europe (excluding the United Kingdom) has bucked the overall trend,  showing easily the biggest increase in net immigration. This is especially true of Germany and France, which showed a near‑doubling of gross immigration in 2018. Time will tell whether these people stay.

It is great to see Statistics New Zealand finally creating some worthwhile immigration statistics; statistics that show high levels of migrant departure as well as of arrivals. What we need also is reliable information about internal migration – changes in the distribution of population within New Zealand. My sense is that Auckland has experienced a disproportionately large amount of departures, to other parts of New Zealand and other parts of the world. Many people have cashed up their capital gains in residential property.