One day soon, we are going to have to have a serious discussion about immigration in NZ

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
26
5

As the New Conservative Party starts to build a migrant backlash, we are going to have to have a serious discussion about immigration in NZ. It won’t just be the weaponised political xenophobia that demands this, the exploitation of free market capitalism demands it and most concerning, climate change will demand it.

Lat year we allowed in 129 000 migrants for a population of almost 5 million.

Australia with 24 and a half million, allows in 190 000 (but it will likely be 165 000 this year).

You can see the immediate difference when comparing NZ with Australia.

On top of that we have 150 000  international students and workers with temporary work visas who have been obscenely exploited by a de-unionised job market and additional to that, we have almost 4 million tourists visiting us each year.

Meanwhile more of our assets and land are being owned by overseas interests.

It is no wonder that our social and physical infrastructure is groaning under unsustainable gridlock.

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No one wants to talk about this.

The Woke Left scream ‘racism’ and ‘xenophobia’ when these facts are raised.

The Right have used this mass migration to prop up and expand a massive speculative property bubble which creates an illusion of wealth for the middle classes who refuse point blank to give that illusion of paper millions up.

The property speculating middle classes refuse to clamp down on migration for fear of it hurting their property investments and big business who exploit international students and workers scream that locals are ‘too lazy’ to work whenever they are pushed on their exploitation.

The vested interests of open door immigration are as impossible to shift as corporate polluters facing real climate change legislation.

Politically the Left self censor while the Right exploit.

That leaves an enormous vacuum and it’s one that the alt-right New Conservatives intend to violently exploit.

Ultimately, this issue has to come to a head because of something ironically that the New Conservatives claim is a hoax – climate change.

Where do you think those 24 and a half million Australians will flee to once their country becomes a hell blasted furnace that is impossible to live in? Forget the tiny populations of the Pacific Islands who will be drowned by rising seas, it’s our Aussia neighbours who will cynically flood our nation once they’ve been decimated by never ending heatwaves.

As we have seen with Brexit and the rise of Trump, the naked fury of those who aren’t economically benefitting from mass immigration is only going to grow, how we acknowledge those genuine economic grievances and frictions without sinking into the sewer of racism is as much our challenge as combating climate change.

 

 

 

 

 

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26 COMMENTS

  1. There are an increasing number of Chinese construction worker gangs working at all kinds of hours on new building sites. Most speak little or no English and are brought here by Chinese developers, some of whom I would consider dodgy. Newshub had this story yesterday:
    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/01/chinese-workers-in-new-zealand-allegedly-left-without-passports-food-toilet-paper.html

    Unite Union seem to be involved!

    Police allegedly made arrests, I wonder who did they arrest, the workers, or the dodgy bosses?

    Another forgotten story:
    https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/child-labour-in-new-zealand-not-only-a-thing-of-the-past-although-not-widespread-alive-and-well-in-nz-in-2018-special-post/

    Seems most Sleepy Hobbits don’t care who builds their ‘affordable’ homes, or who mows their lawns, and so forth!?

    • Was with you until I read the stories you linked to. The Chinese workers who paid $40 – 55,000 to get a work permit to NZ does not make sense. Any income they get would be so much less than that so they are paying to get a residency visa here – they should be removed from NZ as that is corrupt instead the article links to a Give-a-little page. If they can afford to pay an agent $40,000 they do not need my money! The child labour piece was ridiculous – my father used to take me to his work sometimes over the summer holidays, my husbands father had a printing factory and he spent most holidays sweeping, stacking and doing lots of manual work without pay, children often work with their parents if their parents own a business – lots of chippies and dairies have children working holidays, weekends and after school – it happens then they inherit the business.

      • +1 Lucy.

        Not sure why migrants who have $40k plus to spend on getting dodgy jobs in NZ need our welfare when we have Kiwi’s with kids born here living in tents or someone who worked for 20 years in the same job and still on minimum wages… because people are allowed to pay for jobs here.

        What should be happening is that the government does not allow the recruitment agencies to bring in workers and make it much more expensive and harder for them to bring workers into NZ, you know like NZ immigration policy 20 years ago.

        Stop the process before the migrants come to NZ making trouble and cry poor me, and the exploiter operating from NZ are stopped from making money from the process and it becomes illegal to allow workers in with no work and if a person brings them in, they have to pay the workers back the money, pay the government for their deportation and a hefty fine on top and a criminal conviction.

        Also shows that nobody wants these skills, the construction industry is a Ponzi, and nobody wants non English speakers on their sites who don’t know what is going on, not used to NZ building, and are effectively being slaved out by middle men and the end consumer pays when the building is not fit for purpose.

        Also the government need to stop the immigration lawyers operating by changing our lawsto stop all these immigration ‘specialists’ operating.

        Many of these immigration specialists have criminal and dodgy records!

        • Perhaps tell this Internationalist Socialist Mike Treen, Unite leader, who seems to think NZers now have an obligation to find these workers other jobs!?

          Does Mike Treen live in the REAL world, I ask?

      • While you may have a point with the first story that screened on Newshub last night (follow up was tonight), you are being a bit silly re the second story (on Child Labour in NZ)k.

        We are not talking about a child helping their parents selling lollies in a dairy, we are talking about a lawn mowing contractor who is BREAKING THE LAW!

        Inform yourself, please:
        http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2015/0070/55.0/DLM5976660.html

        Read the following:
        Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016

        http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2016/0013/latest/DLM6727530.html

        http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2016/0013/latest/DLM6727584.html

        READ SECTION 46:
        http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2016/0013/latest/DLM6727609.html

        “46 Duty to ensure young persons do not work at or with machinery

        (1) A PCBU with management or control of a workplace must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that no worker aged under 15 years—
        (a) works at or with any machinery at the workplace; or
        (b) assists with work at or with any machinery at the workplace.

        (2) In subclause (1), machinery—
        (a) means an engine, motor, or other appliance that provides mechanical energy derived from compressed air, the combustion of fuel, electricity, gas, gaseous products, steam, water, wind, or any other source; and
        (b) includes—
        (i) any plant by or to which the motion of any machinery is transmitted; and
        (ii) a lifting machine, a lifting vehicle, a machine whose motive power is wholly or partly generated by the human body, and a tractor.

        (3) A PCBU who contravenes subclause (1) commits an offence and is liable on conviction,—
        (a) for an individual, to a fine not exceeding $10,000:
        (b) for any other person, to a fine not exceeding $50,000.”

        A lawnmower is machinery, with a rotating, sharp blade, that could cut a child’s leg off, should it overturn or whatsoever. In any case, it is FORBIDDEN, but this man in that post does not give a shit.

        Maybe he is as ignorant of the NZ Law as you seem to be, both of such cases are a worry.

        By the way, had you read the post, you would have read what the law says.

  2. And the Alt Right is then going into coalition with the Chinese National Party, Bomber? That’ll last 3 years tops…

    The real issue is that foreign residents are allowed to vote (while prisoners aren’t), and the Wage Slave Labour Party keeps importing hordes of foreign National voters (i.e. colonists)…

  3. the national party should be donating to that give a little page for the chinese workers the bloody mongrels all this exploitation happened under there 9 years watch

  4. I’ll edit that for you…”Politically the Left self censor while the Centrists exploit, but with a nice self justified inclusive ‘Third Way’ vibe, while the Right just exploit.”

  5. All evidence points to, if you want to have a great country to live in, you need a small population…. the woke lefties might not like it, nor do the free market who wants increased consumption, but the reality of having a ‘kind’ generous and peaceful country is often linked to low population.

    See below, all the countries considered great, have small populations… and often larger land areas in relation to the population. The governments try to make each person count which makes it a much kinder, educated society in general and those increases the SPI score.

    In 2018 the greatest countries in the world, measured by SPI score, were the usual star performers, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Denmark and Finland. New Zealand was 10th , the UK 13th , Australia 15th and the US 26th. Using the much more comprehensive measure provided by the Social Progress Index the greatest country in the world is Norway. If President Trump wants to “make America great again” he must make America more like Norway.

    Population figures…

    Norway 5.4M
    Iceland 347.2K
    Switzerland 8.3M
    Denmark 5.8M
    Finland 5.6M

    • Do you realise that Switzerland’s 8.3ml are living on an area the size of Waikato, less the mountains. The Swiss culture is severely strained at the moment by “over-stocking” with immigrants and with Germans flowing through to work across the border in Switzerland.
      The landscape beauty of Switzerland is being ruined by large ugly apartments and the villages are disappearing into to ribbon development along the roads. Please do not allow NZ to become over populated. Any farmer in NZ knows the detriments of overstocking of his farm , illness, premature death from starvation, and lower economic returns per animal .
      The discussion should be at what point should our poplulation be held to keep a good quality of human life in NZ.

      • @ON watch, pretty sure economic thicko’s who reside and work in Wellington, are all for increasing the population in NZ into a frightening territory.

        They can’t wait for us to be Asia, with beggars on every street corner and our economy crippled with welfare payments from thinking getting in lowed waged, criminals and non tax payers is a great idea, because they are blind to social good.

        An earthquake or natural disaster is great for the economy apparently, that is what these people believe in, shock doctrine tactics to privatise.

        The woke lefties have not clicked yet what NZ population growth really means long term because they sure as shit population growth not increasing high paid jobs but instead jobseeker payments. Now you apparently have to pay to apply for a free job as an intern!

  6. Many of those countries protect their borders they are pretty fussy who they let into their country whereas we have let everyman and his dog and his dogs mate in ours. Now this needs to stop I see many immigrants here who are very old and cant even speak English now how the fuck did they get into our country see john and bill ( the 2 sirs who fucked our country over )

  7. They are going to be an easy target for Labour, they have no possible coalition partners but National whose record on immigration is what it is.

  9. ….Says the Austrayan!FFS! Dont give this muppet anymore oxygen! He’s got high enough! Anymore and he’ll be wanting NZ to become a State of Austrayah!

    • Could be wrong but neither promised to cut refugee numbers, pretty sure they promised to increase it a bit but still with in the thousands. Think you might be talking about immigration numbers. They could probably come down.

      And this bit from your article

      “That prospect could become a real risk this year, particularly if the economy weakens, KiwiSaver balances fall and the housing market slides ”

      Umm. The government and reserve bank already have policies to cool the housing market so if there’s a slump, that probably means there policies worked.

      • Sam, I never mentioned refugees. I was referring to net immigration, which Ardern and Peters both said they’d cut. Ardern signalled a cut of 20,000-30,000 after the coalition talks (although Peters had campaigned on cutting net immigration to 10,000, but admitted he had lost that battle). The Reserve Bank and the govt do have policies to bring house prices down, as you say, although Ardern has argued the govt can increase supply hugely without reducing prices! I’d very much like to see prices fall but I think you’ll find that if they do fall sharply here the RB will cut the OCR to avoid too sharp a decline and maybe relax LVRs as well. (In Oz, the RB has said it could even use quantitive easing if the housing market falls too far…)
        The housing market, unfortunately, has become too big to fail in both countries. A small fall is politically acceptable; a large one will be totally unacceptable to both govts. We’ll probably find that out sooner rather than later as the slide continues in Oz.

      • Well most international agreements aren’t really different. But that is the result of a bunch of countries unwilling to voice a strong opinion and tackle the problem during the September 2016 New York Declaration (which commits states only to adopting non-binding principles on the treatment of migrants in vulnerable situations).

        Further reading (for people who don’t really understand what’s a compact, read the first one):

        — http://rwi.lu.se/app/uploads/2017/10/RWI_What-is-a-compact-test_101017-senaste-1.pdf
        — https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/how-to-help-the-migration-crisis-and-make-international-law/

        Ultimately, whether the Compacts make a difference to the lives of refugees and migrants will solely depend on the political will of nations that develop and implement commitments in this regard.

        When the servant (finance & banking) become the masters then you’ll get people saying what about me, it’s all the immigrants fault for my last 30 years of investment IQ. The protections put up are one of the big causes of the growing inequality around housing, it’s utterly indefensible.

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