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Brexit sees more than 10,600 people register to move to New Zealand

New Zealand immigration received 998 registrations on the day of Brexit alone

Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith

Monday 22 August 2016 09:10 BST

Auckland (Getty Images)

Ireland may have experienced a record number of people applying for passports when the UK voted to leave the European Union, but new data from New Zealand’s immigration office shows it’s not the only nation that has been inundated with requests for residency.

The number of people in Britain registering to move to New Zealand has increased ten-fold since the referendum, with the country recording a total of 10,647 registrations of interest 49 days after the result, according to Immigration New Zealand.

A total of 998 British citizens registered with New Zealand immigration on 24 June, the day of the result, while only 109 people had registered the day before. The 10,647 figure is double the number of people who registered in the same a year ago, which was recorded at 4,599.

A spokesperson for the immigration office said that it usually receives 3000 registrations from British nationals interested in studying, working or investing in New Zealand per month, but stressed that the numbers relate to registrations of interest for people moving to New Zealand and not visa applications.

Just days after the UK voted to leave the EU Ireland’s foreign minister Charlie Flanagan appealed to members of the British public eligible for an Irish passport to stop rushing to apply for one, claiming it was placing “significant pressure on the system and turnaround times”.

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

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1/66 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

More expensive foreign holidays

The first practical effect of a vote to Leave is that the pound will be worth less abroad, meaning foreign holidays will cost us more

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

No immediate change in immigration status

The Prime Minister will have to address other immediate concerns. He is likely to reassure nationals of other EU countries living in the UK that their status is unchanged. That is what the Leave campaign has said, so, even after the Brexit negotiations are complete, those who are already in the UK would be allowed to stay

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

Higher inflation

A lower pound means that imports would become more expensive. This is likely to mean the return of inflation – a phenomenon with which many of us are unfamiliar because prices have been stable for so long, rising at no more than about 2 per cent a year. The effect may probably not be particularly noticeable in the first few months. At first price rises would be confined to imported goods – food and clothes being the most obvious – but inflation has a tendency to spread and to gain its own momentum

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

Interest rates might rise

The trouble with inflation is that the Bank of England has a legal obligation to keep it as close to 2 per cent a year as possible. If a fall in the pound threatens to push prices up faster than this, the Bank will raise interest rates. This acts against inflation in three ways. First, it makes the pound more attractive, because deposits in pounds will earn higher interest. Second, it reduces demand by putting up the cost of borrowing, and especially by taking larger mortgage payments out of the economy. Third, it makes it more expensive for businesses to borrow to expand output

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

Did somebody say recession?

Mr Carney, the Treasury and a range of international economists have warned about this. Many Leave voters appear not to have believed them, or to think that they are exaggerating small, long-term effects. But there is no doubt that the Leave vote is a negative shock to the economy. This is because it changes expectations about the economy’s future performance. Even though Britain is not actually be leaving the EU for at least two years, companies and investors will start to move money out of Britain, or to scale back plans for expansion, because they are less confident about what would happen after 2018

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6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you

And we wouldn’t even get our money back

All this will be happening while the Prime Minister, whoever he or she is, is negotiating the terms of our future access to the EU single market. In the meantime, our trade with the EU would be unaffected, except that companies elsewhere in the EU may be less interested in buying from us or selling to us, expecting tariff barriers to go up in two years’ time. Whoever the Chancellor is, he or she may feel the need to bring in a new Budget

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Ireland received more than 4,000 enquiries from Britons about whether they were eligible for an Irish passport and able to stay part of the EU three days after the result, compared with its usual average of 200 inquiries.

Professor Paul Spoonley, a sociologist professor at Massey University, said that the Presidential run in the US could see similar levels of interest from Americans.

Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, he said: "I anticipate that post Brexit and if [presidential candidate Donald] Trump wins in America, you're going to see a spike in interest from people there about coming to New Zealand.

"We saw it during the Bush years from Americans, and I think over the next three to five years, you're going to see a significant increase in the numbers of migrants coming from both Britain and the USA."

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