International Migration

1860 – first reliable coverage of New Zealand's international arrivals and departures. Earlier data did not cover all of New Zealand's provinces.

April 1921 – arrival and departure cards are introduced. Passengers are split into three passenger types - overseas visitors, New Zealand-resident travellers, and permanent and long-term migrants.

1942–1945 – limited detailed data during WWII.

April 1975 – sampling of arrival and departure records begins. Some detail is only captured from a sample of arrival and departure cards, and statistics are produced by multiplying the results by the sample ratio.

April 1978 – detailed international travel and migration statistics for this month onwards are available in electronic format. Earlier detail is only available in hard-copy reports.

July 1979 – sampling of permanent and long-term migrants ends, with detailed data now collected for every migrant.

September 1997 – the New Zealand Customs Service begins supplying Stats NZ with passport and flight data electronically for all arrivals and departures. Stats NZ holds a record for each passenger movement from this date. Some detail continues to be collected from arrival and departure cards for only a sample of passengers.

June 2004 – Stats NZ begins using scanning and image-recognition technology to automatically capture most of the required information from arrival and departure cards.

July 2008 – the name "International Travel and Migration" is adopted, replacing "External Migration", which had been used since 1921. The new name better reflects that the statistics include short-term travellers as well as permanent and long-term migrants.

July 2013 – New simplified departure card is released. Some changes to arrival and departure information as a result.

August 2016 – New processing system is introduced (See 'Data Collection' 'International travel and migration processing system changes in August 2016' for more information).

May 2017 - Report describing the 12/16-month rule for classifying migrant status.

November 2018 - Removal of departure card from the New Zealand border and is replaced by smarter electronic systems.

January 2019 - International migration uses the outcomes-based measure. This is a new official measure estimated from the actual travel histories of people travelling in and out of New Zealand. It provides a more accurate measure of migration – a traveller is classified as a migrant based on their actual movements. This new measure replaces the previous migration measure (permanent and long-term (PLT) migration) which was estimated from travellers’ statements on arrival or departure cards – based on how long they intended to stay in New Zealand (or be away).

January 2019 - First release of the international migration data using the outcomes-based measure.

January 2019 - Separate International migration and International travel releases. Before January 2019, International migration and International travel were published combined as one release (International travel and migration - ITM).

January 2020 - From January 2020, governments around the world, including New Zealand, imposed international travel restrictions due to the spread of COVID-19. From early 2022, some governments, including New Zealand, relaxed these restrictions, allowing more people to cross their borders. From 1 August 2022, New Zealand’s border opened to all visitors and international students.

March 2020 - New data on migrant departures to Australia. This is the first time Stats NZ has published figures showing migrant departures to Australia, since the removal of traveller departure cards in November 2018.

January 2020 - From January 2020, governments around the world, including New Zealand, imposed international travel restrictions due to the spread of COVID-19. From early 2022, some governments, including New Zealand, relaxed these restrictions, allowing more people to cross their borders. From 1 August 2022, New Zealand’s border opened to all visitors and international students.

March 2020 - Temporary release of regular border-crossing flow data to facilitate analysis of the COVID-19 international pandemic and impact on inbound and outbound tourism sectors.

April 2020 - Since the release of April 2020 data in June 2020, we suppressed the trend series (see International travel: March 2020 – Suspension of trend estimates) and monitored the impact of COVID-19 on the seasonal pattern. This was because travel and border restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic introduced sharp decreases to many international travel series and disrupted regular seasonal patterns. We have been applying a split-adjustment approach to seasonally adjusted series. Months up to March 2020 are seasonally adjusted, and months from April 2020 (inclusive) reflect observed actual values without seasonal, trading-day, or holiday adjustment.

October 2023 - Resumption of seasonally adjusted and trend series. In October 2023 we resumed the publication of seasonally adjusted and trend series for international travel with the release of August 2023 data. Methodology for bridging seasonally adjusted international travel and migration series impacted by COVID-19 has more information. In March 2024, with the release of January 2024 data, a methodological change was made to cope with the impact of the pandemic. Seasonally adjusted and trend series up to February 2020 will no longer be revised, to avoid any unintended revisions in the historical series caused by recent data.

With the outcomes-based measure, it takes 17 months before final migration estimates are available. To produce timely results, a statistical model is used to produce provisional migration estimates. Statistics produced using these provisional estimates have uncertainty for 16 months; after this time we can finalise the classification of all border crossings (according to the 12/16-month rule).

Customers have a choice of using the most timely migration estimates which have more uncertainty, or waiting a few months until the migration estimates become more certain.