On Tuesday I saw an article on NZ Herald’s Facebook page with the headline ‘People smuggling boat headed for NZ shores’. I never read Facebook comments but this time I did just to see if Australia’s inhumane treatment of ‘boat people’ may have sparked kiwis to react in the opposite way.
Big mistake.
The blatant lack of compassion far outweighed the few advocating for the world’s most vulnerable people.
Even though it’s hurtful to see, I’m not sure they’re to blame. Fear mongering about asylum seekers is rampant and damaging.
Firstly, they’re not ‘people smuggling boats’. These are refugees escaping persecution. Do you seriously think families, including children, leave everything behind, cram themselves into a rickety boat and cross the oceans knowing they have no guaranteed protection on the other side if their lives in were safe and secure? Would you?
To refuse to acknowledge that all humans are entitled to safety is the first step to dehumanisation, which eventually allows for people like Katie Hopkins to have space in newspapers to call them ‘cockroaches’. Lets not follow in those footsteps.
Unless you’re Maori, we all come from somewhere else and we or our ancestors left for a reason. It’s unfair to enjoy the ‘privilege’ of safety and opportunity while outright denying that for others.
Secondly, to say we can’t afford it is a cop out. If we spend our wealth in the right places, we can absolutely afford to double the refugee quota and take them in, just like we can afford to educate our future doctors and make sure our babies are growing up in warm, dry homes.
While John Key stands in front of the nation and says we’re allowed to own as many cats as we like, children are starving in the middle of the ocean. It’s in his hands to ‘get some guts’, do something about it and he simply won’t. In his usual fashion he dances around the question and simply gives no answer.
“Unless you’re Maori, we all come from somewhere else…”
Not quite correct Latifa. EVERYONE in New Zealand/Aotearoa came from somewhere else. That is the one thing that we all have in common.
But I absolutely agree with the questions you raise.
Kiwis like to be liked but still haven’t quite worked out how to do that. Once upon a time it was a friendly welcoming country but only if you were of a certain colour and origin. In America they are called WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants).
We like to think that it is not like that today but you don’t have to scratch the surface very deeply to get to their true nature.
Insecurity breeds fear of change, and welcoming people from other cultures and ethnicities involves change. Kiwis are essentially insecure.
One thing to bear in mind, (and you are quite correct to point out it is not their fault they believe these things they read about) is where do they get their information on asylum seekers? The majority will do so via the mainstream media which in NZ is totally government supportive and no longer a discoverer and announcer of truth.
What this means is that consumers of this media will simply parrot those rather simplistic and bigotted opinions they read about in the papers or see on TV.
The number of asylum seekers allowed for has not changed in several decades. The world has changed and more people are in desperate life threatening situations than ever before. NZ needs to at least double the number allowed each year. That would only bring us to a parity with many other countries.
Just because the Australians are racist arseholes does not mean NZ needs to be the same. Here is a chance for Kiwis to be admired and held up as a forward thinking country on the issue of asylum seekers.
Will it, or will fear and bigotry prevail?
“EVERYONE in New Zealand/Aotearoa came from somewhere else. That is the one thing that we all have in common.”
It is people like you, who forget that there is such a thing as the Treaty of Waitangi.
So many people, probably you. Come to NZ, live here a while and think they are Kiwis. You wouldn’t stand up to defend NZ from a foreign invasion. Instead you would return home.
The point I am making is, we could double our quota. But next year someone else will be asking for us to double it again. This country is going through problems of its own. Let us sort our shit out, before trying to convince the world to step up.
I have not forgotten the Treaty of Waitangi.
Have you forgotten the great voyages from Hawaiki?
Even the Mori-Ori came from somewhere else. Aotearoa is a group of islands; how else are humans going to be here, if not from somewhere else over the sea? Spontaneous existence? Parallel evolution?
Te Tiriti, among a number of things, acknowledges Maori as the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa, not of having been here since Homo Sapiens first walked the earth.
If you want to deny people access to NZ that’s your opinion and you’re welcome to it. It seems rather selfish and lacking in compassion to me, but you have a right to be selfish and lacking compassion if that’s what you want.
I choose not to think that way.
Have a nice day.
Who knows, maybe Maori were NZ’s first asylum seekers.
I always have a nice day. Thanks.
You don’t address what I say.
I don’t deny people access to New Zealand.
Asylum seekers are not any less than you or I.
I am simply stating that New Zealand has problems, it is not perfect. These problems should come before the worlds issues. NZ is a small nation and it does provide help.
If we double our quota, we will get asked to double it again and again. Organizations will never stop asking. And our people here will continue to struggle.
If you want to bring further hardships to Kiwis, then that is your opinion and you are welcome to it. However, it seems rather selfish to me and truly lacking in compassion.
But thats what you want, you ignore the problems here and you try to fight the worlds problems from a “group of islands” as you say.
As for your group of islands…. Pangaea kthx.
The quota hasnt increased in 28 years. And you think that people will be asking for it to double again next year. What foolishness.
You are the one who is foolish.
I am saying that if we double the quota. IF.
Learn to read first, before calling people foolish or suggesting they are.
Doubling the amount of refugees taken in is good, and should be done. The problem after that is accomplished would be to think about the million or so refugees waiting in the queue.A lot of aid is required.So far as the Islamic part of the refugee crisis is concerned I would think countries that have been involved in the destabilizing of the regions should be very involved in helping out. Coincidentally these same countries with their neo-liberal exploitation of the planet and its people should be showing the way for reducing carbon footprints. The world needs to come together and rethink itself. Otherwise the current million or so refugees is just the beginning.
On your last paragraph. It is easy to talk tough about nameless foreign nobodies getting killed thousands of kilometres away, but quite different when you are required to front up and explain why children in your own country are dying from preventable diseases.
“Unless you’re Maori, we all come from somewhere else” Totally offensive. There is now the technology to cheaply and easily establish ancestry through a simple DNA saliva test that will tell you exactly where you come from – for those who choose to know. The article above, being the complete nonsense that it is, and similar nonsensical articles that appear on this site from time to time, detracts so much from all the other good stuff here.
There are 52 million refugees in the world looking for a safe and better life. We are a compassionate people. We can spare our wealthy and complacent life. Take them all, I say and show the world how much we really care.
We might want to take them in, but doesn’t accepting these people just encourage more to try the journey and result in far more people dying at sea? Isn’t that what happened in Australia?
Just a factual point. There is no quota for asylum seekers: we must appraise the claims of all who are in NZ who claim asylum. Last year there were 130 succesful applications, which is down 75% since 2001 when stricter measures were put in place to stop people without the right documents getting on planes.
The quota is used by countries that have few asylum seekers and who want to do their fair share. We take 750 per year on this quota with another 300 potential places for family reunification (who don’t receive the same support as the original 750). Doubling this quota would move us to 78th in the world at hosting refugees per capita.
Food for thought :
If You & your Family were barely making ends meet to survive, would you feel morally obliged to take in outsiders as well, if it meant your Own Offspring would likely get even less or starve?
There is an exact parallel to this Question vis a vis New Zealand as a Nation
On a different level , Why not force ALL CEO’s, TV NEWSREADERS and anyone else on GROSSLY UNREALISTIC Salaries) to sponsor all overseas “refugees”.
Their individual worth as HUMAN BEINGS has been grossly miscalculated on a Universal Human Scale!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hey , the CEO of Telecom alone could afford to house them all on his/her Salary!!!
“If You & your Family were barely making ends meet to survive, would you feel morally obliged to take in outsiders as well, if it meant your Own Offspring would likely get even less or starve?”
We already have an inequality in NZ as it is… Kiwis going to Aus for asylum..
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