And I should care about “New Zealand” why? I care about people, even if they weren’t born in New Zealand. Because y’know, that’d be what we call “Racist”.

…yes of course open borders means open to refugees? Because that’s what the word open means? Seriously is this difficult for people to understand?

Yes. That’s what open means? Pretty darn simple

Only if you want to totally destroy NZ.

Although I agree with most of what you say this bit is wrong:

immigrants take up jobs but also create them by spending what they earn as customers

Because, as Treasury showed, immigrants are mostly taking low skilled jobs they’re actually reducing productivity per capita and that is actually making us all poorer – as you point out will be the result of an open borders policy in your first paragraph. In other words, the warning you put in there about what will happen is already happening.

We actually need to stop immigration for at least a few years just so that we can take stock of where we’re at and rebalance.

ALWAYS ANTI RACIST – does that mean to Refugees too? What also annoys me, is that there is a refugee crisis and we take a pitiful amount of refugees and our doors are open to the factory owners, fraudulent applicants and plutocrat kids coming to NZ to buy up property and gain residency migrants. What a double standard!

Surely there are chefs, fruit pickers and restaurant manager’s refugees?? It is not like the National government wants a high standard of education or achievement to settle here.

In fact just show an easily manipulated bank account, pay your commission to the agent, and bobs your uncle – your in!

Open for whom, anyone??? Any numbers, skilled or not skilled?

Creating wealth for oneself, and people she may be connected with, and acting for. The overly PC mad New Zealand administration is not up to it, and most dare not raise any questions, as it may instantly be labeled “xenophobic”, “racist”, “sexist” and so forth.

That though is only back firing, and will not help anyone seriously and honestly discussing the challenges there are. Some are genuine, others come to just fill their own pockets, or to build a nest egg or more, earning rent from desperate others, all wanting to live in the BS “paradise” Paul Henry and the likes talk about.

I agree Mike, but the devil is in the details. In internationalist theory, if there were no state-enforced borders, and people could move anywhere they want, they would move away from over-populated areas. But by the same logic, people should be moving away from Auckland into the less population regions, but they aren’t. For similar reasons, without immigration controls, people living in poor countries want to move to rich countries. Now this is understandable, but if they all did that, the countries they moved to en masse would simply become poor countries, with all the same economic, infrastructural, and environmental problems.

Because immigration policy is such a wicked problem, it’s shaping up to be an important issue in the election next year. As usual NZ First are using very polite criticisms of immigration to dog whistle racists (mainly old, white racists, but also right-wing Māori nationalists) into voting for them. If Labour and the Greens defend workers’ right to freedom of movement, I expect this will be spun by nationalists as a sign of unreformed “neo-liberalism”. Of course, neo-liberalism is about free movement of *capital*, not workers, but never let the truth get in the way of a good spin line.

As it happens, I think we do need to have limits on immigration, but for environmental and sustainability reasons; for example stopping our farmland and bush reserves disappearing under housing, and living within our resource limits for things like sources of renewable energy and infrastructure for waste management (eg there’s only so much landfill space in a small island country). But how do we balance the need to be responsible stewards with the need to show solidarity to workers regardless of their place of origin? In other words, how to discuss limiting immigration while rejecting xenophobic and economic nationalist arguments for it (immigrants take up jobs but also create them by spending what they earn as customers)?