Island Life: Browned to perfection
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merc,
Heh, nifty edit, borders...
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We'd have too many ... X.
You mean mutants with superpowers?
[changes gears]
I assume the class doesn't consider it a matter of racism to, for example, exclude people who you don't reasonably expect to make a positive contribution to that economy thingy.
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Opps typos aplenty...
My point though was regional/ state service providers plan for changing demand in services - schools, hospitals, sewage etc (any capital development) based on demographic information. Simply saying, we don't mind who/where/when, come one and all is way to risky.
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Lyndon, personally I think a balanced approach includes some migration to meet labour market requirements and some to meet humanitarian ones. Skilled migration avoids the some of the costs of developing your own workforce so maybe those savings should be applied to providing assistance to refugees?
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There's sound reasons for limiting the number of people entering into a country as most infrastructure, public and private, is developed based on demographic forecasts and having open boarders would play havoc with that - almost all migrants to Australia end up in Eastern capitals, most in Sydney - the Sydney infrastructure is struggling.
You'd also get people coming here so they could skip to Australia - I think the Aussies would get sour on that pretty quick.
In terms of infrastructure pressure, I think we're already taking a favourable view of immigrants prepared to live somewhere other than Auckland, aren't we? But I can see why new immigrants don't necessarily want to.
My research (consisting of an enjoyable conversation with an Indian woman who drove a taxi) suggests that new New Zealanders see Auckland as the place where they can improve their station - while going to Christchurch is seen as opting for the quiet life. Tze Ming? Is that a widely held view?
I also talked to an African who had been rather boldly prepared to live in Timaru, where there was a skilled job for him. He seemed to have found it tolerable, but nonetheless had wound up driving a taxi in Wellington ...
So yeah, most of the immigrants I meet are driving me to the airport ... I liked it when my friend had a contract cleaning business. He employed people other employers wouldn't take - which often meant immigrants. I'd occasionally join him for a drink and a smoke with a couple of them (there are ways of transcending language barriers).
His observation, as a working-class guy himself, was that (unlike taxi drivers) they usually seemed really isolated from public life and didn't have much idea of what was going on. That's where home-language media can be so useful. And I'd far rather listen to indipop in a taxi than ZM ...
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"most of the immigrants I meet are driving me"
Funny you should say that. I had a Kiwi in my car recently. Complete disaster, as he was navigating.
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"I assume the class doesn't consider it a matter of racism to, for example, exclude people who you don't reasonably expect to make a positive contribution to that economy thingy."
Depends why you don't reasonably expect it.
Building a sewerage system and schools and hospitals requires labour. The cheap labour of unskilled immigrants working on infrastructure projects for NZ would entirely cover the cost of those immigrants, and then some. They would be paying tax, spending money, and working. All good. I don't really get the problem at all. That is *exactly* how the wealthiest parts of the New World were made. You don't get educated professionals making roads and railways, even if roads and railways are what you need.
I suppose it is risky. So is *not* doing it. Everything in life has risk.
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Ben, there's bugger all demand for unskilled labour even in construction/transport.
In Australia, the forecast demand for labour over the next twenty years is predominantly for people with qualifications around trade-level and above (the forecast growth in jobs in Australia are jobs that require a vocational qualification). NZ's not really much different last time I looked.
I also think it's more than a little unreasonable to allow a person into NZ on the basis that they'll do work the domestic population won't.
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Most of the immigrants I meet are my neighbors and they work for a living in various jobs. None of them are professionals, but they're not a drain on the state either - they drive trucks and work on the roads and suchlike, all stuff that needs to get done. They're a shitload more motivated to work than most of the guys I was at school with, a goodly proportion of whom spend most of their time working out how to avoid work and tax, and bugger off overseas to avoid paying back student loans.
Also taxi drivers, of course. It's probably keeping the cost of cabs down, something I'm glad about, living in Auckland.
I think if we had an open door policy, Auckland would outstrip Sydney in under 10 years. NZ would outstrip Oz in every way except quantity of sand within 20.
Of course Maori would become even more of a minority. White people would probably become a minority. But if we planned ahead, both groups could be *rich and powerful* minorities.
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Paul, if our infrastructure was strained, which is the main counterargument so far provided to the no-policy-policy, then there would be plenty of demand. If there was no demand then surely there would also be no problem?
Why do you think it's unreasonable to allow people to do work that others won't? If that is better for them than living wherever they were, it's got to be to their advantage. If immigrants can't get ahead in NZ they won't come here. The whole problem just balances out.
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Ben, I reckon your experience is consistent with a managed approach to migration - one that ensure that those entering into the country are likely to get jobs. This is a bit different to saying let everyone in and hope they don't end up in ghettos (I lived in Mangere in the '70s and '80s and remember what happend to Polynesian "over-stayers" when the economy cooled).
Skilled migrants into Australia generally have more skills than the domestic population and most now find work, if not in their preferred area. But this scheme, and the NZ one, is managed around targets and flows which allows for planning around schools, housing, health services etc.
Growing the domestic population will have benefits, but it'll also create challenges that need to be thought through - think about the housing bubble in Akl for instance or waiting lists at hospitals - in the end though, the success of the NZ economy is not about growing the domestic demand, it's about developing products that have global appeal - this of course may well be an argument for encouraging more migrants on the basis that they'll assist opening new markets?
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Yeah, I did use the "reasonably" deliberately and the economy by way of example - not to exclude anything else. I wasn't meaning to argue a position, just respond to the can-it-be-unracist question.
I do think diversity is strength but I don't seems to have details.
Blatant criminality? I'm sure various security agencies would still want data on who was coming in - it would drive them mad if they couldn't exclude somebody.
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merc,
I've been an immigrant in a non-english speaking country and doing the unskilled job thing. So funny when one of my bosses knew what class I was back home he changed gear completely, before that I was not allowed to speak English on the job, among other things.
See, Turia is talking browning because that leaves the unspoken class thing, something which was obliquely adressed in Once Were Warriors. -
There's plenty of brown-necks out there, Tze Ming, who aren't going to pay the slightest attention to a parenthetical half-backtrack excluding 'Asians' from the general anathema
I do find the "we're all agin the white devils!" thinking that a few East and South Asian posters on PA espouse at once depressing and amusing - the latter because a quick glance around the rest of the Pacific would show that Melanesian and Polynesian peoples in our neck of the woods are just as, if not more, happy to scapegoat Indian or Chinese groups as they are white folks.
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Surprised I've got no bites on my no-immigration-policy-policy. I wasn't kidding on that one. Can anyone who doesn't like to think of themselves as a racist give me a clear description of the kind of people we don't want in this country?
So you wouldn't check to see if someone held to ideas that genocide was acceptable, if they had criminal convictions for rape or murder?
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Rogerd and Lyndon, criminality is just about the only thing I agree on. Only if they're actually wanted for some crime though. If they've done their time, well, it's not so clear to me.
I don't know how you'd know if someone was into genocide, unless they had actually done it, in which case the criminality criterion is surely sufficient.
It's interesting that we have such difficulty dealing with the idea of no borders, and yet almost everywhere it's actually tried, there is no real problem. The borders create the problems that everyone worries about.
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Ben, what country has an entirely open border and what benefits are achieved in that country(ies) that are unrealised in Australia or NZ?
I don't want to harp on and on but I think it would be unwise to have no limit on numbers and to not preference skilled over unskilled migrants (while also accepting a reasonable level of refugees). At the very least our migration policy should attempt to replace skills and labour lost when NZ residents head overseas.
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Ben: all immigration policy is indeed racist - it's predicated on the fact that people who are born in a country are in some way intinsically *good* and those from outside have to prove their *goodness*.
Having said that there are unfortunate, pragmatic reasons why countries like NZ need an immigration policy of some sort.
- If we were the only English-speaking country without one (I heard that Taiwan has no immigration restrictions) we would possibly attract everyone who couldn't get into Australia, Canada, etc. All at once.
- People overseas (mostly in developing countries) develop an unrealistic view of what western countries are like. It's wrong to encourage migration by people based on a fantasy that will soon be dashed (quote from a 19th century migrant to the US: "__I heard the streets were paved with gold - when I got here, not only were they not paved with gold, they weren't paved at all and I was expected to pave them__").
I'd favour losing most of the system of language tests, shortage job lists and so on and have a simple system: new immigrants get a work permit when they find a skilled job (= one with above average wages or in a socially useful profession) or start a business. After two years taxpaying, they get residence.
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" It's wrong to encourage migration by people based on a fantasy that will soon be dashed "
Mate, the NZ High Comms round the world need to be abandoned then, together with the rest of the nation state embassies.
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I'd favour losing most of the system of language tests, shortage job lists and so on and have a simple system: new immigrants get a work permit when they find a skilled job
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On the one hand, I think the language tests might be a little over the top but there's a direct cost to employers if you don't have them - either in terms of training or in terms of ACC premiums - there's a strong correlation between workplace accidents and lack of English.
With the approach you suggest, what do you do to the poor migrant that can't find work - track them down and turf them out? It seems a little around the wrong way to me - the current system uses qualifications as a proxy for employability and mostly works (no pun intended) - why change it?
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I think if we had an open door policy, Auckland would outstrip Sydney in under 10 years. NZ would outstrip Oz in every way except quantity of sand within 20
So, in 10 years Aucklanders would be drinking recycled waste-water?
And the rest of us in 20?
I know people dealing in the pure realm of conomics, where one can wave away pesky resource limits with "the market will find a way", but there's only so much space and water to go around. I, for one, like the fact that New Zealand does not look like Britain or Japan, density wise.
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There are times when density can be a good thing. New York, in spite of its intial high-rise footprint, is actually rated America's greenest city because of high rates of public transit use, and the fact that a very large proportion of New Yorkers don't have to walk far to work (or play, for that matter).
From my own experiences, if one ever settles in a cookie-cutter suburb, jsut be sure to have Dr Nitschke's phone number handy.
A city like Wgtn can do with a few more high-value people - enough for a decent economy of scale, but not so many people that it becomes a big sardine tin like London.
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Paul, most of the planet had an open door policy prior to the 20th century. The benefits are obvious - people can move around freely as need and desire dictate. The only time it's necessary to close borders is when you are at war, or about to be. NZ is not at war.
I don't get why we need to have exclusively skilled workers. That just displaces existing skilled workers. Unskilled workers can still work, and their work is a large part of what makes society tick. It may be that there are no jobs for the ones that can't speak english and have no skills. If that is the case they will not want to come here.
Rich, I don't see it as immediately obvious that a sudden massive increase in NZ's population would be that bad. Nor is it obvious that would happen. I think an increase would be likely, but it would be much slower than you think. I guess I wouldn't like to receive boatloads of people from countries that are at war, with populations being deliberately displaced. They should certainly be refugees.
Rogerd,
"So, in 10 years Aucklanders would be drinking recycled waste-water?"
Touche. I'm looking from the point of view that most people in the world would rather live in Sydney than Auckland, and that could reverse quickly. I think more people preferring to live in Oz than NZ would take a lot longer. Water and space limits are self regulating.
That you don't want to be like Britain or Japan (unlike most of the world and most of the skilled educated NZers), says your X is "people" too?
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I think NZ is the only western English-speaking country that could consider having no immigration policy.
The main reason why it might work here is that we are so far from everywhere else. Therefore we don't get the kind of destitute poor who sneak across borders into Europe. And if anyone managed to navigate a small boat all the way here from say, Asia, then they're certainly resourceful enough to keep!
Migrants have to be able to afford a flight, which implies they have some money, and hence some useful skills.There are the same negative points here as in other western countries. It depends whether, as a society, your goal is integration or something else.
Allowing unrestricted migration will most likely lead to migrants from the same country forming ghettos where they only socialise with those they know, rather than the present situation where migrants are able to happily live almost everywhere. This would lead to a more divided society.
Removing the English language requirements would further encourage this.
It would also be a drain on our social services if migrants without skills in demand were eligible for social welfare, or an increase in crime if they were not.
At the moment (partly due to NZ's comparitive disinclination towards racism) migrants have just as much chance as a native Kiwi of being successful here (at least, once those with qualifications have managed to get the NZ equivalent). If numbers sharply increased, which is surely what we are expecting from a relaxed policy, then this situation might change to their disadvantage.Perhaps it is something we could trial for 3 months and see how it goes. I'd rather we still barred criminals though, and it would be nice if not everyone went to Auckland!
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I think an important think to bear in mind when thinking about the environmental impact of migration is that the world is all one ecosystem. So when someone moves from Delhi to Auckland, it's not increasing the load on the planet, it's spreading it. I agree totally with Deep Red that density (within limits) is good for the planet.
I'd recommend this book, BTW:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Immigrants-Your-Country-Needs-Them/dp/product-description/0316732486Paul: I don't really see a problem with potential migrants failing to find work. The solution is to treat them as visitors - require adequate cash and a return air ticket.
Juha: I'm a migrant and I like NZ enough to stay. I didn't ask the High Commission for advice though - I came here on holiday, liked it and eventually moved here.
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