New Zealand has announced stricter requirements for the issuance of work visas and the introduction of new rules for the admission of migrants. Wellington's change in the work visa program is due to the "record migration" in 2023, when a "record" 173 thousand people immigrated to the country.
In particular, mandatory English language proficiency requirements are introduced for low-skilled personnel, and a minimum threshold of skills and work experience is set for most vacancies on work visas. The maximum period of continuous stay in the country for low-skilled personnel will be reduced from five years to three years.
"The government is focused on attracting and retaining highly skilled migrants, such as secondary school teachers, where there is an acute shortage of staff," said Immigration Minister Erica Stanford. "At the same time, we need to ensure that New Zealanders are at the forefront of finding jobs where there is no shortage of qualified personnel," she said.
New Zealand, which has a population of about 5.1 million people, has seen a rapid increase in the number of migrants since the pandemic.
Neighboring Australia, which has also recorded a sharp influx of migrants, said it would halve the intake of immigrants in the next two years.
Experts from the Kamchatka branch of the FITs Unified Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences have discovered signs of an impending eruption of the Bezymyanny volcano
More than 280 underground tremors, with an amplitude of up to 4.9 on the Richter scale, occurred in the first weekend of February in the area of the Greek island of Santorini