External Migration December 2004 year

Nature of data
The statistics in this release are based on final external migration counts for the December 2004 year. They relate to the number of movements of travellers, rather than to the number of travellers, ie the multiple movements of individual people during a given reference period are each counted separately.

Data for country groupings
As of December 2000, the country groupings used in this release are consistent with the New Zealand Standard Classification of Countries 1999 (NZSCC 1999). Prior to this date, country groupings were based on the NZSCC 1995. The following changes have resulted:

1. The Americas region (which includes Northern America, Central America, the Caribbean and South America) replaces Northern America. As a result, countries in Central and South America and the Caribbean are no longer included in the 'Other' category in Tables 2–7.
2. Minor revisions to some other regions.

New Zealand resident short-term departures
The commentaries relating to New Zealand resident short-term departures are based on the data for the country of main destination, ie the country where each departing person intended to spend most of his or her time while away from New Zealand.

Changes in migrant category
In the preparation of migration statistics, the classification of each passenger is primarily determined by the passenger's response, on the arrival or departure card, to the question on intended or actual length of stay/absence. If the person's intention changes later during the trip, then they may also change their migrant category. For example, if a person comes to New Zealand with the declared intention of settling permanently, but in fact returns overseas after a few months, then that person is classified as a permanent/long-term migrant on arrival, but is later classified as a short-term visitor on departure. This is known as migration category jumping. Data users should recognise the limitations inherent in the information supplied by travellers.

Sampling accuracy
The statistics for short-term passenger movements by country (ie arrivals by country of last permanent residence and departures by country of main destination) are derived from a systematic random sample taken each month from arrival and departure cards, and are therefore subject to sampling errors. However, total counts for short-term arrivals and departures of overseas visitors and New Zealand residents are actual counts, which are not subject to sampling errors. Figures for permanent and long-term arrivals and departures are also actual counts and have no sampling errors.

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New migration processing system
To capture survey information more efficiently, Statistics New Zealand is developing new processing systems which incorporate scanning and image recognition technology. A new migration processing system using this technology was first used to process the arrival and departure cards for June 2004. A key difference between the new and previous systems is that there is now no need to manually enter the passport number for each traveller. In addition, classing (as overseas visitors, New Zealand residents, or permanent and long-term (PLT) migrants) and capture of the information required for the migration sample are done automatically for the majority of the cards. Those cards that cannot be classed (or are classed as PLT) and those that have fields that cannot be recognised are manually processed using the card image. It is expected that operator intervention should only be required for approximately one-quarter of the cards. The new system, designed to capture the same information as previously captured, is used only for the production of statistics.

It is expected that data captured using the new system will be largely consistent with previous data. Users need to be aware of the changes to the processing system when comparing data for June 2004 onwards with data for earlier periods.

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