Monday, August 01, 2005

Immigration

Generally both the left and right are infavour of immigration the right sees it as a way of boosting the economy and the left sees it asan act of social freedom. The “middle” however is occupied by the somewhat anti immigration NZ first.

NZ should set its immigration policy in order to benefit itself.
One of the key aspects is that NZders should be able to speak good English, any new immigrant should be able to understand and integrate with our economy - there is a major problem when you create dual economies one speaking one language and another speaking another - this can also happen without language separating the economies but language differences certainly make it worse (there is statistics available that prove this). Note that I don’t see European culture as particularly good but NZ does benefit by having a reasonably homogenous culture be it Chinese or English or Maori or some place between them all.

I am highly in favour of immigration of people with high IQ or who are otherwise likely to contribute to our economy or nation in general. I am however interested in the holistic picture - it is no good to let in a smart businessman if you know he will take a family of six "unproductive" people with them. If they want to do that they should apply as a group. We can then asses their value to the country.

As far as refugees go I have quite a hard headed stand. NZ is not the closest refugee destination to any country we thus should not be taking any emergency refugees. Any refugee should seek safety in the nearest safe country with the most similar culture if required NZ can help to pay for that. All immigrants to Nz should go through the process of immigration and no one should be allowed to skip the queue. I suggest NZ can open its doors to immigrants from oppressive regimes but only through the appropriate channels and using appropriate screening and selection criteria.

NZ should be highly pragmatic when it comes to immigration.

HOWEVER if other countries were to agree I philosophically am inclined towards having totally open boarders and allowing full freedom of movement to everyone. However I dont see this happening in the near future and therefore N shoudl remain pragmatic for hte moment.

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