Q+A doing some good public broadcasting this morning with the first of their post Covid specials considering the future of immigration.
Th panel were excellent.
In my mind, there are 3 issues with immigration in New Zealand.
1 – Exploitation of migrant workers: The appalling manner in which migrant workers and international students are exploited in New Zealand should be a national shame. The lack of worker rights and protections offered migrant workers ad international students allows for an underworld of mass abuse to occur minus any resourcing to police it. It is outrageous that we coax these people here only to abuse them!
2 – Upgrade domestic infrastructure: The housing crisis and overloading of infrastructure makes life far more difficult than it should be for domestic beneficiaries, renters and the working classes because high immigration hurts them most by forcing them to compete for housing, jobs and public services. The resentment towards immigrants would evaporate if the infrastructure issues are addressed.
3 – Civic Obligations: We have to acknowledge our Civic Obligations in our immigration policy. We have to accept climate change requires us to bring in more Pacific Islanders fleeing sinking islands, we have to accept more refugees with more wrap around services because we live in peace and freedom.
NZ is a liberal progressive democracy. Our acceptance and tolerance of a multi-cultural society is a strength not a weakness but exploitation, domestic resentment from underfunded infrastructure and a lack of championing civic obligations makes for an uneasy voting population looking for someone to blame when the economic conditions turn grim.
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NZer’s have been driven into exploitation and poverty and sadly they don’t even get a a mention from the lefties.
Go down the food banks see the homeless on the streets, they are generally not migrants, but Kiwis.
Go to the rich areas like the North Shore in Auckland and see who is living there.
Charity does not start at home in NZ. Quite the opposite.
Welfare system in NZ completely overloaded. No reciprocal welfare rights to Kiwis in most countries while our government gives away NZ taxes to foreign nations that is not reciprocated.
Public Health care in India is poor quality and most people don’t use it…
“The Indian public health sector encompasses 18% of total outpatient care and 44% of total inpatient care.[10] Middle and upper class individuals living in India tend to use public healthcare less than those with a lower standard of living.[11] Additionally, women and the elderly are more likely to use public services.[11] The public health care system was originally developed in order to provide a means to healthcare access regardless of socioeconomic status or caste.[12] However, reliance on public and private healthcare sectors varies significantly between states. Several reasons are cited for relying on the private rather than public sector; the main reason at the national level is poor quality of care in the public sector, with more than 57% of households pointing to this as the reason for a preference for private health care.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India
Public Health care in China is not free for urban nationals…
“Residents of urban areas are not provided with free healthcare, and must either pay for treatment or purchase health insurance. The quality of hospitals varies. ”
“Despite this, public health insurance generally only covers about half of medical costs, with the proportion lower for serious or chronic illnesses. Under the “Healthy China 2020″ initiative, China is currently undertaking an effort to cut healthcare costs, and the government requires that insurance will cover 70% of costs by the end of 2018”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_China
Chinese pensions…
Guess what, in China you have to CONTRIBUTE minimum 15 years to get a pension and only get 1% of the indexed wage in China for your public pension.
http://www.oecd.org/els/public-pensions/PAG2017-country-profile-China.pdf
In India it sounds like no free public pension and minimum 10 Years of CONTRIBUTIONS of 12% and only 12% of the work force seemed covered for pensions anyway.
http://www.oecd.org/els/public-pensions/PAG2017-country-profile-India.pdf
In NZ you don’t have to contribute at all to a pension as an overseas person or be working, just be resident here for 10 years (used to be 5 years) to get 43 per cent of the NZ average wage and it is not means tested for overseas pensioners either.
“To meet the residency requirements for New Zealand Superannuation, Veteran’s Pension (New Zealand pensions) and most New Zealand benefits, generally, you must:
be lawfully resident, and
be present, and
be ordinarily resident in New Zealand, and
have spent some time living in New Zealand (a period of residence).”
https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/pensions/travelling-or-moving/moving-to-nz/residency-requirements-for-new-zealand-benefits-and-pensions.html
Not surprising that NZ is now the place to retire to and be supported as an overseas resident as well as the free quality health care that many have to pay for in their own countries!
Superannuation and health care was known about as a major issue a decade ago for our lazy immigration policy. Natz encouraged it, and Labour have just bought back migrant parent entry based on woke stupidity.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1110/S00572/grey-power-warns-of-impact-of-high-immigration-rates.htm
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/315435/migrants'-parents-cost-nz-'tens-of-millions‘
This now means that in NZ aged asian pensioners have sky rocketed and now is expected to be more than the number of aged Maori and Pacific Islander’s combined within a decade.
You can also now sponsor in other aged people you marry at 79 under our ‘relaxed’ marriage laws for residency and the government seems hopeless to do anything about it.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/376220/10k-11-days-and-one-failed-deportation
Britain set up New Zealand to suit Britain. No one else, and that set off war after war until maori almost got wiped out. Now we have to remiliterize the boarders the effects of which will be to drive islanders across the border.
Just from a logistics perspective does the pacific Islands even posses a ship that can make it past Australia let alone orchestrate and evacuation of hundreds of thousands off of sinking islands? Trivial, no they can’t.
Oh and yes. Consideration towards culture and commercial arrangements.
Britain set up New Zealand to suit Britain. No one else, and that set off war after war until maori almost got wiped out. Now we have to remiliterize the boarders the effects of which will be to drive islanders across the border.
Just from a logistics perspective does the pacific Islands even posses a ship that can make it past Australia let alone orchestrate and evacuation of hundreds of thousands off of sinking islands? Trivial, no they can’t.
Oh and yes. Consideration towards culture and commercial arrangements. The boundaries are struggling to contain multiple cultures so some how the government is going to have to ease out of people’s lives and stop trying to hide austerity and allow people to run there own affairs.
“NZ is a liberal progressive democracy.”
Do you think you could arrange for someone to let a few of those Wellington bureaucrats know that?
And while you’re at it, let ’em know we’re all growed up and no longer in need of the wisdom, habits and all the various peccadilloes (large and small) of our colonial masters.
We don’t ekshully need our “Big Brutha” across the ditch – despite wat @ Ada and one or two others thin k – unless we want to pursue that inferior complex.
(That is of course unless you think lil ‘ole NuZull that punches above its weight thinks its cultural and economic value lays in the value of some unreality TV show like the Joi Soy (GC), or whatever else some Joolie Krusty abomination tries to tell us)
The horse has already bolted.
Yes the horse had bolted under the Natz, but the woke, neoliberals and lefties now seem to be aboard and spurring the bolting horse onwards.
Facts are that Labour, unions and woke as well as the right wingers encouraged hundreds of thousands of temporary workers and foreign students with their families into NZ in the past 5 years who now have no prospects of decent employment and income and have had kids, bought in relatives etc, but refuse to leave.
Clearly having a child, being mental ill, having a 11 day romance, being a criminal and so forth are all grounds to stay in NZ.
In NZ if you have any of the above, you will not be expected to ever leave NZ when your visa conditions change and be looked after for the rest of your life by the Kiwi taxpayers with a lovely free state/community house, free medical care, free income support, free child support, free justice, free aged care and free mental health treatments etc.
Heard on the radio today, some elderly lady who needed a hip operation and could only walk 5 steps was originally told it would be 6 months for surgery, now are not even qualifying for the waiting list 6 months later. She has to pay $30k for a private hip operation due to the health system being so overloaded.
The worlds foreign retired are treated like kings and queens in NZ, everything is free here – but increasingly those that did pay taxes, don’t get free health care as it is privisation by stealth. How long can people wait in agony, before they spend their life savings on formally free operations in NZ?
That is why everybody around the world who don’t have very good prospects in life and no income are flocking to NZ
Sadly the woke can’t wait to help them, unlike their own people who are now in worst poverty and huge delays for health care, due to the above approach.
Why wouldn’t you come to NZ, with our laws allowing it.
I dont mind people coming here to live but things have changed somewhat over the last 10 years.
It seems that the skill level has been reduced so migrants are now competing with citizens for employment reducing what citizens can expect to earn. Then there is the housing issue, there simply isnt enough houses to support influxes of people.
National has alot to answer for, their 9 years in power created all these problems and now Labour is sitting on its hands?
Are either of them worth voting for I mean honestly are they any different now?
This is a contentious issues the problem is Covid has highlighted the exploitation many of us really had no idea of the level of the problem with our reliance on foreign labour. Also I don’t agree with Professor Spoonley saying people who don’t like immigration are zenophobic. When we see products being produced many NZers cant even afford to buy like apples and our meats etc to name a few. Immigration has both a good and bad side and these were debated on Q & A yesterday.
This is a contentious issues the problem is Covid has highlighted the exploitation many of us really had no idea of the level of the problem with our reliance on foreign labour. Also I don’t agree with Professor Spoonley saying people who don’t like immigration are zenophobic. When we see products being produced many NZers cant even afford to buy like apples and our meats etc to name a few. Immigration has both a good and bad side and these were debated on Q & A yesterday.
Kiwifruit is $9 kg last time I checked. Funny the industries that bray for cheap labour like supermarkets, construction, aged care and horticulture haven’t raised any wages but make huge profits. It seems the business who do the most braying and using migrant labour (due to not attracting the lazy Kiwis, sarc) when wages have dropped to the point where benefits are both more secure and higher paid than gig labour and the taxpayers then support the migrants and their families and the increasing beneficiaries. Meanwhile more houses, roads, public transport, hospitals, doctors, schools, police, jails, waste water/sewerage are needed for each new family coming to NZ.
Um, let me see – rampant immigration caused huge infrastructure and housing problems, led a race to the bottom wage regime that imported wage deflation, and has exacerbated widening inequality. Only when discussions such as this move on from ‘racist woke calling’ and actually deal with the lived reality of immigration, will we actually be able to address the huge problems immigration has caused.
And please don’t reply about ‘skills’. The evidence is in – immigrants into NZ have in aggregate lowered the skill level of NZ. We’re only doing it to benefit a few rich listers and business.
Are you saying its too late Jacindafan cause I believe its never too late and I expect this government who many of my whanau and myself helped to get elected at least do something.
You are better to vote for the Maori party to save your whanau, as they seem more serious about reducing immigration and currently seem the only political party prepared to say and do it.
We have people within our organisation, in a corporate role(English) until covid hit, that would travel back to the U.K. to head hunt, cherry pick friends to migrate to New Zealand to fill positions no one within our organisation , nor within N.Z., i.e. Fijian, Maori, Samoan, Chinese, kiwi, etc, had a chance to be promoted into said positions. How do you possibly change that dynamic? Many people complain kiwis are lazy when in fact they are shut out via migrants “selected” for roles.
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