On the first para, two thoughts. First, I doubt that studying at a NZ university materially alters the likelihood of a successful migration experience, but even if does to some extent that effect is probably outweighed by bias the system sets up against better, more skilled, people who have studied elsewhere (eg your own good self) – after all, our universities don’t rank overly highly globally. Pragmatically, I can imagine a system that treated all universities in the Anglosphere pretty similarly – and perhaps even others in the top 200 universities globally – and gave graduates of such universities preference over others. If young Chinese really wants to live here, I’d not want to hold it against him/her that they studied at ANU rather than AUT. And I’d rather a young Brit wanting to migrate here studied at Oxford than at Canterbury or Victoria.