A redder shade of green

Good news for Marxists and immigration lawyers -

The Press reports the Green Party has called for a big increase in New Zealand's annual refugee quota as part of its immigration and population policy.

In a bid to widen its base from "traditional environmental issues" the party intends to push for a boost in the annual quota from 750 to 1000 by 2010. The Greens sat they are also planning to make it easier for parents and immediate family members of new migrants to apply for residency and to make marriage, civil unions and de facto partnership re-unifications exempt from all quotas.

How exactly all this is supposed to benefit the environment is of course left unmentioned.

The Greens are at least honest enough to admit their is no economic benefit to increased refugee quotas and they wish to do so for "humanitarian" reasons. However, in the long run I'd even question whether bringing immigrants from third world countries to industrialised western countries is particularly humane.

There's increasing anecdotal evidence that the majority of refugees from economically poor countries are struggling to adapt to life in western countries and are ending up at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. In terms of access to health and welfare services they are no doubt better off, but in terms of finding employment and fitting into the local community they might be better off being sponsored to live in a non-western country with a similar culture to their country of origin.

Furthermore, the burden of re-settling refugees in western countries falls disproportionately on working-class citizens who live in the communities where refugees are usually settled.
Sponsoring refugees to live in other countries should appeal to left -leaning parties since more of the burden for re-settlement would fall on middle class and upper income taxpayers rather than the working class.