Refugee Intake a Political Football

It is regrettable that whenever general elections approach, some political parties descend to using the most vulnerable in our society as footballs in the political game. The latest is National's effort to outdo Winstone Peters and New Zealand First in its appeal to the latent xenophobia in all of us.

With elections just a month away, Don Brash has called for a cut in the number of refugees we take in each year.

Many New Zealanders might be surprised to learn that of the 9.2 million refugees in the world, New Zealand limits its quota to 750 a year, or about 0.00018 percent of New Zealand's total population, while Australia took 15,967 refugees in 2004.

These persons are not immigrants in the sense of people who, like Don Brash's forebears, exercised a choice to leave their native countries to immigrate to New Zealand. They are people who have been pushed out of their own lands by war, persecution, threat of execution or imprisonment for exercising rights that we take for granted here. It is for that reason that many of them need financial assistance and other help with settling in.

Family Reunification is the cornerstone for successful resettlement of refugees and migrants and Dr Brash's policy of wiping off this category is in no way promoting this concept - instead it erects a huge barrier.

There are many meaningful issues to be debated in the run-up to the elections. It says much about what a party has to offer when it tries to divert attention from topics of real substance, to one appealing to base but unsubstantiated fears.

Dr Nagalingam Rasalingam
President
Refugee Council of New Zealand

The above article featured in the Viewpoint column of the 14 August 2005 issue of the Sunday News - a weekly newspaper of New Zealand.