Quote for the week

Great line from View from the Right on the strange desire of Britain’s elites to continue promoting immigration in the crowded post colonial era:

“The British couldn't afford an overseas empire any longer, so they brought the Third Worlders to Britain, imagining they could continue benignly leading them at home just as the had done in the former empire.”

Immigration and housing shortages in Britain

Last week there was a lively exchange at the Guardian website, on a comment thread for a blog post by Simon Fletcher, about access to public housing in Britain.

In response to the author’s claim that the difficulties low-income native Britons are finding in obtaining affordable housing “have nothing to do with immigration,” a commentator under the name Zac Smith, weighted in with a public housing allocation list from Birmingham City Council, showing most housing in Birmingham was indeed going to recent immigrants. Then about half way through the thread a commentator named Monnie hit on the main reason why recent immigrants were more likely to receive council housing:

“…migrants jump the queue because they tend to have bigger families and that means they are deemed to have greater priority for housing.”

Family size is a key criteria for preferential treatment by local government authorities and native Britons, with smaller families on average than African or South Asian immigrants, are more likely to lose out.

Unlike skilled middle-class Britons who are able to deal with overcrowding by voting with their feet and moving overseas, the country’s disgruntled working-class natives can’t just up and leave if they can’t find a house.

Traditional blue-collar destinations like Australia only want a limited number of educated and skilled workers from the motherland, while economic stagnation, illegal immigration and language barriers mean Continental Europe is unlikely to appeal to most working-class Britons. Subsequently they have little to lose by supporting immigration restrictionist  parties like the much-maligned British National Party.

Government opposes amnesty

Amnesties for illegal overstayers have a poor record of success in most countries where they have been tried (see here, here and here).

Now the New Zealand Department of Immigration admits that they’ve haven’t been very successful in New Zealand either.

Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman told a government select committee last week the government is not considering another amnesty for overstayers as the previous amnesty in 2000 had proved to be a failure.

New Zealand currently has about 16,000 overstayers, with about a third coming from Samoa and Tonga.

Immigrants can't find jobs, so increase immigration

The Press reports that a visiting international economist Philippe Legrain has told New Zealand that it shouldn't cut immigration during the recession

At a Department of Internal Affairs-sponsored meeting in Christchurch, Mr Legrain spouted the usual Economist-style arguments about immigrants boosting creativity and being essential to economic growth, without providing any evidence of how such growth is supposed to boost the living standards of existing citizens.

Instead of trying to protect their jobs by calling for a slowdown in immigration, he said local workers should take it on the chin and direct the blame on "the bankers in the United States," (I wonder if that includes those who lent too much money to recent minority immigrants).

He also said that New Zealand needed more Asian immigration so it could take advantage of the expanding markets in East Asia, while overlooking the fact that the country already has thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of well-educated Chinese, Japanese and Korean speakers, should our export companies require their services.

To illustrate his total disregard for the concerns of local workers, he even admitted that thousands of recent skilled immigrants are struggling to find work as it is:

"During the two weeks he has been in New Zealand, Legrain said he had heard a lot of stories that highly-skilled migrants were unable to get jobs in New Zealand either because their qualifications were not recognised here or companies wanted people with New Zealand experience."

If recent immigrants are already being passed over by local employers, then maintaining high immigration levels during a recession will only make it even more difficult for them to find jobs.

What I think Mr Mr Legrain is really saying here is that because many immigrants are failing to find suitable employment, the country needs to bring in more immigrants to compensate for these lost "units of production," so as to maintain a high rate of economic growth that enriches our elites and avoid any empty berths in Auckland's yacht marinas.

Of course immigration-based economic growth doesn't increase per capita income unless it also lead to an increase productivity levels, and there's little evidence that productivity levels have increased much since National's neo-expansionist immigration drive began in 1990. This can be seen most starkly in the relationship between house prices and wages - since 1990 median house prices have almost tripled, while the average wage has only increased by about 40 percent.

Unfortunately while most people probably aren't particularly impressed by Mr Legrain, John Key apparently is. Recently he announced that National won't be aiming to cut immigration during the recession, and will be sticking with its expansionist target of 45,000 immigrants per year.

That may not sound a lot to overseas readers, but for a small country of 4.2 million, it represents a higher figure than most other developed countries, particularly for one which has little labour-intensive industry and derives most of its income from primary production and tourism.

Immigration agencies in the firing line

An inquiry into the business practices of New Zealand immigration advisors for Immigration NZ has revealed many instances of immigration advisors exploiting clients, and insufficient regulation of the industry.

According to the Immigration Advisors Authority only 171 of the estimated 1200 immigration advisers in New Zealand are licensed.

Immigration NZ says it will no longer accepted migrants applications lodged by unlicensed agents.

Canada's anchor babies

Canadian doctor's have recently noticed an increase in expectant mothers from foreign countries having babies in Canada to secure citizenship for them.

According to the article, most are relatively well-off mothers from developing countries.

Under Canadian law, anyone born on Canadian soil automatically becomes a Canadian citizen and is entitled to state funded social services such as Medicare.

So far the number of anchor babies being born in Canada hasn't reached the levels seen in the U.S, but the problem is likely to increase if the government fails to tackle the issue soon.

On a more positive note, the government of Australia says it intends to reduce skilled immigration in response to the global economic slowdown.

The size of the expected cut should be annouced in the next few weeks.

Counting the cost of population growth

With global food prices on the rise, we have yet another reminder to reconsider whether immigration-fueled population growth is really a good idea.

In an article on the News with Views website, American talk radio pundit Frosty Woolridge points out some of the numerous negative effects of large scale legal and illegal immigration into the United States:

"What does growth really bring to you and me? Yes, it creates a few ‘rich’ people. However, Bartlett said, “It brings more homeless, more unemployed, more people living in poverty, more traffic congestion, higher parking fees, more school crowding, more unhappy neighborhoods, more expensive government, more and higher taxes, more fiscal problems for the state, more air and water pollution, higher utility costs, diminished democracy, crowded highways, growing costs of infrastructure maintenance, higher food costs and more destruction of the environment.”

You will encounter a few more: overloaded campgrounds, beaches, ski resorts, more litter, higher gas costs, greater housing costs, water shortages and loss of choices and personal freedom. "

In my view this list constitutes a pretty powerful argument in favour of immigration restrictionism. Just about all of these trends can be applied to most other western countries including New Zealand.

About the only negative impact which doesn't really apply to New Zealand is immigration-based unemployment. Fortunately, this country, unlike the US, doesn't have a high level of unskilled immigration at present, so we don't have quite the same problem with immigrants taking jobs away from unskilled native workers. Hence the unemployment rate is only about 3-4 percent, which is one of the lowest in the OECD.

Other than actually bite the bullet and reduce immigration, there is little governments can do to shield citizens from the impact of expansive immigration. For example, the Labour government has attempted to reduce poverty by reintroducing family benefits, but any benefits from increased government spending has largely been canceled out by the increasing cost of housing, food and utilities.

Western recruitment agencies undermining health care in the third world

Last week the Press had a couple of articles about Filipino nurses working as low paid care workers in Christchurch. According to the Press, trained Filipinos nurses are paying large sums of money to recruitment agencies to secure jobs in the city's hospitals, only to end up in working in nursing homes.

To register as nurses in New Zealand they first have to pass an International English Language Test examination, which is proving to be a major stumbling block for many applicants. Since the Philippines, like most developing countries, has a looming shortage of doctors and nurses, which is arguably more serious than ours, it seems a waste of human potential for them to be working as low paid, semi-skilled workers in a western country rather than as skilled nurses in their home country, where they know the local language and customs.

Care work is also one of the lowest paid professions in the country, with most workers getting paid slightly above the minimum wage of $12 per hour. Before trying to strip the developing world of it's medical staff, it might be an idea to try and offer slightly better work conditions for native workers.

In a sign of the times, the article also revealed that Filipinos were the largest group of net migrants from Asia last year, with 6143 immigrants, up from 5065 the previous year.

Quote of the week

From a recent Fred Reed post on those borders:

"To grasp American immigration policy, to the extent that it can be grasped, one need only remember that the United States forbids smoking while subsidizing tobacco growers. "

Lets play bash the populist

Following New Zealand First deputy leader Peter Brown's comments about the latest figures on Asian immigration, the Press has come out with the usual self-righteous cliches that the mainstream media likes to use to confirm its adherence to fashionable middle-class views.

What's particularly depressing about this is that the Press isn't a dogmatically liberal paper by New Zealand standards. Like CNN with Lou Dobbs, the Press at least manages to allow for some unfashionable views by publishing populist and traditionalist letters to the editor on a fairly regular basis. By contrast, I can tell you from personal experience that the type of material I publish in this blog wouldn't stand much of chance of getting into the Sunday Star Times or Dominion (the later being NZ's equivalent of the LA Times).

The Press's official editorial piece on the topic, entitled "Contribution, not colour, is the best judge of a migrant" (Saturday, April 5 not online) starts reasonably, but soon gets sanctimonious:

"Playing the race card has become something of an election year ritual for New Zealand First. So much so that the only uncertainties this year were when the card would be produced and which NZ first MP would deal it. These questions were answered this weak when the party's deputy leader, Peter Brown, cited a Statistics New Zealand forecast that Asians would outnumber Maori by 2006 because of short-sighted immigration policies. This was anathema to Brown, who argued that Asian migrants would not integrate into New Zealand society and that this would create division, friction and resentment. Not only are Brown's views plain wrong, but the majority of voters will not be duped by this cynical tactic on polling day."

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but hasn't periodic immigration restrictionism had a pretty good track record of hastening rather than blocking integration ( as far as is practical when immigrants are from totally alien cultures). One reason why the grime predictions in Enoch Powell's famous "rivers of blood speech" didn't happen was because the UK government wisely decided to reduce immigration from Britain's former non-white colonies during the late 60s and early 1970s.

In New Zealand, the relatively high unemployment rate among East Asian immigrants is finally starting to sort itself out precisely because Labour's tougher English language requirements have lowered East Asian immigration in the last few years, thereby reducing tensions with established immigrants and giving employers time to absorb the labour influx.

You also have to wonder why the Press feels the need to take such a strident line against Brown if it believes his populist stance is unlikely to have much influence on voters anyway.

The Press also suggests Brown has no right to a view on Asian immigration because he is an immigrant, and that it is "richly ironic" that he should be questioning Asian immigration. I'm sorry but, I don't get the irony. Immigrants are entitled to have an opinion on immigration just like everyone else. Many people have come to New Zealand precisely because it's a lightly populated country which has traditionally been cautious about immigration. What's "richly ironic" is that the Press seems to advocating colour blindness on the one hand (people from all cultures should be able should be able to come) , and snobbish nativism on the other (only native whites and indigenous Maori's should get to debate immigration policy).

Then of course there's the further irony that it's a British immigrant who is being attacked for questioning non-western immigration, in what is arguably the most British country outside Britain.

While the writer of the article does make a point that NZ first has tended to exaggerate Asian crime levels, and should be precise when talking about immigrant groups, they drop another howler in talking about immigration and education by citing an Afghan refugee as a "prime recent example" of a high achieving Asian student. Now I've got nothing against giving credit where credit's due, East Asian students in western countries do have an excellent academic record, but Afghans? I'm sorry but this isn't a "prime example," of academic success, it's a very atypical one. According to the field of psychometrics, East Asians have an average IQ of 105, Afghans a likely average IQ of about 83.

If the Press can't recognise that Afghan and East Asian levels of academic achievement are wildly different, then you have to question whether the paper should be assessing the relative contributions of perspective migrant groups.

A troubled stranger in a strange land

New Zealand newspaper opinion pages over the last week or so have been filled with comments about an incident in which a 33-year-old Somalian woman allegedly stabbed three people and tried to take control of a small passenger plane in Blenheim.

The woman in question, a refugee named Asha Ali Abdille, arrived in New Zealand in the early 1990s, and according to a spokesman for the Somalian community quoted in the Press, had a long history of difficulties fitting in.

According to Immigration services, she had been raped during three years spent in a refugee camp in Kenya, and has had a history of mental health problems during her time in New Zealand.

In 1994, she came to the attention of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters when she tried to bring in 14 family members, and the minister revealed she had several convictions.

The obvious question in a case like this, is why a troubled person from a non-western culture, should have been let into the country as a refugee when she had no family or friends here.

Given that she apparently had a large number of family members in Africa, who could potentially have provided guidance and support, wouldn't she have been better off staying in their instead of moving to a distant and very alien country which is difficult and expensive to travel to?

As Mark Richardson at Oz Conservative has pointed out, it tends to be better if refugees are settled in countries which have a similar culture to their homeland, and which, I would add in a case like this, are not too distant from friends and family.

Those who advocate settling third world immigrants in western countries, will argue that poor third world countries cannot afford to take on refugees, and that the refugees in question will suffer at the hands of disgruntled locals.

However, why not offer to sponsor such third world refugees, instead of ambitiously trying to resettle them in the costly West.

For a fraction of the cost of trying to resettle refugees in western countries, where there is a high chance they may never fully integrate, western governments could provide refugees with comprehensive support in neighbouring countries. Since such refugees would not be an economic burden on the host nation, it is less likely that they would be treated badly, and in many cases they might actually be welcomed as a stimulus to the local economy.

There is also increasing evidence that many refugees actually experience downward mobility when they move from a developing country to a complex western country, where they are unlikely to be fluent in the local language or be able to come to grips with the inevitable labyrinth of bureaucratic obstacles and competitive pressures that confront them. Such downward mobility is likely to be a significant factor in the relatively high crime rates of many refugee communities in western countries.

Conversely, an refugee from a developing country who moves to another developing country with a similar culture with assistance from a first world country, is more likely to be able to rebuild their previous socio-economic status, and arguably is less likely to become involved in anti-social behaviour.

Canadian immigraton

Most websites about non-western immigration tend to be either by immigration restrictionists or pro-immigration liberals. The Canadian site NotCanada (hat tip: Elliot Lake News) takes a different tack. It looks at immigration from the perspective of immigrants who have given up on trying to settle in Canada and have returned to their homelands, feed up with life in the over-hyped West.

Personally I find some of the claims of prejudice against immigrants a little overblown, but I do have sympathy for immigrants who have come to a western country under false promises, and have been ripped off by greedy governments, employment agencies and immigration lawyers.

Life in North America and Australasia may be better than in many less developed countries, but that doesn't mean they're lands of milk of honey. Crime, traffic congestion, living costs, and bureaucracy are all on the increase, and big business and government are not providing prospective immigrants with realistic, objective information about job opportunities (maybe we should have independent bodies to assess labour needs?).

For example, there's no point in the Canadian government allowing in more doctors from non-western countries, if it doesn't think such doctors are adequately qualified to work in a western hospital. Such a policy will inevitably anger both immigrants, who will feel exploited and deceived, and locals who will perceive it as a cynical way of bringing in cheap labour.

Economists and the great unwashed

Economists hate people, people hate economists.

It's a prickly relationship, but one which both sides have learned to live with.

Unfortunately though, it seems not all economists are happy with the status quo.

In the Myth of the Rational Voter Bryan Caplan argues the ignorant masses can be turned into economic rationalists, provided they are given the necessary ideological training, and that once provided with a suitable economic education they will then become rational voters.

Yes, we're not stupid after all, just ignorant.

In a glowing review Caplan's work in the Press, ( Saturday, January 5) University of Canterbury economist Eric Crampton latches onto his findings to launch an attack on those "redneck" conservatives and populists who have the impudence to see the world a little differently from mainstream economists:

"Clustering together the differences between the public and economists on a variety of questions, Caplan concludes that the public is severely biased agianst foreigners, biased against markets, biased in favour of make-work projects, and biased towards pessimistic assessments of how well things are going."

Crampton goes on to describe teaching economics as akin to "teaching evolutionary biology to an incoming class of new-Earth creationists."The general public may be ignorant about many things, like the history of western civilisation or how to write a grammatically correct sentence (damn my English teachers!), but one thing they aren't usually ignorant about is basic economics.

Even the most ignorant skinhead in a medium security prison knows about the law of supply and demand, hence his opposition to immigrant labour. Sure, this may not be the only reason for low wages and increasing economic inequality, but no one can automatically say it is economically illogical for the unskilled and uneducated to be in favour of limited immigration.

To illustrate the public's supposed ignorance of basic economics, Crampton picks the odd example of Labour's introduction of an interest right-off for student loans prior to the last election:

"When Helen Clark in 2005 argued that students wouldn't take on more debt at a zero interest rate, folks up and down the corridor in the economics dept tore their hair out at the sheer irrationality. But the statement seemed entirely reasonable to non-economists."

Well as one of those supposed irrational "rednecks" who Crampton ridicules, I can tell you that Clarke's statement didn't strike me as entirely reasonable, nor did it to most other lay people I spoke to at the time, redneck or otherwise.

If memory serves me correctly, most people, including populist politician Winston Peters, thought it was very risking giving students a full interest right-off and that it might have been more prudent to lower the interest rate a little and reduce tuition fees.

In any case, Labour's student loan interest right-off was just one of a number of policies which may have influenced voters, and I don't think it is reasonable to assume it was the primary reason why Labour won the election.

Of course, just because voters have a basic understanding of economics does not mean they will necessarily vote for policies in the public interest. As economists themselves famously point out, people can be selfish and often like to vote for policies which benefit themselves at others' expense. The most obvious example in New Zealand of voters failing to take account the public good is in the area of pensions. Today, It's largely verboten in NZ politics to talk about means testing for pensions, after the perfectly reasonable surcharge for higher income earners was repealed in 1998.

While Crampton insults the intelligence of New Zelanders, Caplan knocks his fellow Americans for having an stingly, irrational view on foreign aid. No mention of course that the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US maybe dampening American enthusiasm for helping out those in the third world.

Right liberalism - the fool's gold of the centre-right

While the popularity of the centre-right is on the wane in many western countries, centre-right parties should not get sucked into the idea that right-liberal policies are the way to win back voters.

The decline in support for centre-right parties over the last 20 years basically comes down to three factors:

1. unmarried women are tending to support the centre-left

2. declining home ownership is having an adverse impact on support for centre-right parties

3. ethnic minorities are voting for the centre-left.

The basic strategy of mainstream conservative parties since the early 1980s has been to try and contain left-liberalism through neo-liberal economic policy, and abandon the supposedly less important social sphere to the centre-left.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in increased immigration of left-leaning minorities and an accompanying increase in property prices which has made it harder for people to get a foot on the property ladder.

Since property owners are more likely to favour low taxes and economic stability, this decline in home ownership had undermined the traditional support base of the centre-right. Making things doubly bad is the fact that, as Steve Sailer points out, property affordability is also a decisive factor in family formation.

Most potential centre-right voters are rational people who are unlikely to start a family until they have a reasonable chance of getting an affordable mortgage. While the marital or property status of men does not have a particularly big bearing on their political views, it often has a decisive impact on the voting patterns of women.

The longer women stay unmarried, the less likely they are to vote for the centre-right and the more likely they are to be swayed by the generous welfare policies of the left. This is a point highlighted by Democrat pundits Jon Judis and Ruy Teixeira in their new book The Emerging Democratic Majority. According to Judis and Teixeira, during the 2000 congressional elections, single women backed the Democrats over the Republicans by a massive 63 percent to 35 percent.

The centre-right's strategy of liberalising the financial sector, while increasing non-western immigration, may have helped it gain short-term support from big business, but it has done massive damage to its electoral base. The sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US, in which taxpayers are having to bail out bankrupt lending institutions, is likely to further undermine popular support for the centre-right.

In recent decades, centre-right parties, such as the New Zealand National Party and the Australian Liberal Party, have tended to assume they could count on the support of economically successful minorities. However, recent evidence suggests that this assumption is no longer valid. For example, in California and Australia, East Asian voters are tending to vote for centre-left candidates, which seems counter intuitive from a class interest perspective. Part of the reason for this may be that Asian immigrants support the well-funded health and education services found in many English-speaking countries, but are able to avoid paying for the full cost of these services through taxation by earning a lot of their income overseas.

The current strategy of the centre right, as typified by National leader John Key and Conservative leader Duncan Cameron, is to move further to the left on social policy, so as to attract voters away from the now dominant centre-left, whilst maintaining a neo-liberal stance on economic issues. However, since centre-left parties have already moved towards the centre on economic issues, the centre-right is effectively chosing to campaign on territory where the centre-left is already well entrenched, and in so doing is failing to provide voters with a distinct alternative.

Since the Iraq War has done serious damage to the right's reputation for handling foreign policy issues, the most promising area where centre-right parties can recover lost ground is by moving to the right on immigration. Opinion polls show that the majority of voters in western countries are in favour of immigration restrictionism, and the social and economic externalities of immigration are probably the hotest topic on talk radio.

Given big business's involvement in promoting immigration expansionism and its tarnished reputation for passing on externalities to consumers, as seen in the blundering inefficiency of many national telecoms, and the corruption of companies like Enron, centre-right parties should not be promoting neo-liberal ideologues like libertarian Ron Paul to lead the charge against the centre-left.

In 2005, the National Party went to the polls with a libertarian ideologue of its own, former reserve bank governor Don Brash ( New Zealand's answer to Alan Greenspan) and despite a reasonable showing in the provinces, failed to regain office for a third time.

Sadly though, the centre-right is still not yet learning from its mistakes. In the US primaries many conservative voters and pundits are chosing to back the neoconservative canditate Rudy Guliano over the more conservative Fred Thompson, while limited immigration advocate Tom Tancredo has already pulled out of the running.

How many more electoral defeats will the centre-right have to suffer before it swings back to conservatism?

Islamic Immigration in Europe

Reading through Christchurch’s Press last Saturday it was pleasing to come across a relatively right-wing review of Bruce Bawer’s book, While Europe Slept: How radical Islam is destroying the West from within.

The reviewer, an Anglican vicar from Christchurch called Ron Hay, points out that Bawer says he left America partly in reaction to the Christian right. However, setting in Europe with his gay partner, he discovered that Islamic fundamentalism made its US counterpart look benign:

"Falwell was an unsavoury creep, but he didn’t issue fatwas. James Dobson’s parenting advice was appalling, but he wasn’t telling people to murder their daughters. Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imans wanted to drop a wall on me."

Bawer acknowledges both the rapid growth of aggressive Islam in Europe and Europe’s present policy could well end in disaster. Like many US critics though, he criticizes the Europeans for failing to integrate Muslim immigrants, without recognising that Europe is not the United States, or that the US has no experience of dealing with large numbers of Muslim immigrants.

In contrast to Europe, life is much cheaper in the United States, where recent immigrants can afford to buy cars to get around in, and the economy revolves around flexible labour laws and economies of scale production. Since the cost of living is cheap, people have more disposal income and there is a greater demand for domestic services. Subsequently the US is a great place for someone with limited skills to find work (or a least it was until it became swamped by central American immigrants).

By contrast, life in Europe is crowded, bureaucratic and expensive. Fewer people can afford cars and even if you have a car, the roads are crowded and difficult to navigate. Since life is more expensive, there is also much less need for hired hands like nannies and gardeners. Manufacturing firms have to be smart and innovative to compete with larger US and Japanese competitors, so they need skilled workers who can work with minimum supervision.

Furthermore, since every country has its own language and customs it is difficult to move around and seek out opportunities in other parts of the EU. Europeans countries also tend to have generous and intricate welfare systems, which are largely paid for in advance, and many people feel they should not be extended to recent arrivals.

All this means Europe does not have the ability to accommodate large numbers of immigrants, particularly if they are unskilled and do not understand local laws and customs.

Perhaps the biggest concern though is reproduction differences. In some European countries Muslim immigrants are having three times are many children as indigenous Europeans. As the problems in Palestine show, major differences in reproduction rates between ethnic groups will eventually lead to serious conflict, and the only solution is to keep the different groups apart.

The Europeans do have a right to demand that immigrants adhere to local values, but while you can make it compulsory to learn the local language in schools, its not really possible to force people to integrate if they don’t want to. Just because non-English speaking European immigrants responded to aggressive assimilation policies in the United States during the first half of the 20th Century, does not mean non-European Muslim immigrants will respond in the same way.

Since many Muslim immigrants appear unwilling or unable to integrate, the only options are to curtail further Muslim immigration, introduce voluntary repatriation schemes, and increase incentives for indigenous Europeans to have more children.

A major reason why European birth rates have fallen so low, is the high cost of housing in western Europe, and the dire shortage of housing in Eastern Europe (a legacy of Soviet-era mismanagement). Economic libertarians may loathe to admit it, but subsidised housing was a major factor in the demographic growth that occurred in Europe and Australasia after the end of WWII. (It’s an interesting irony that many baby-boomer libertarians might not have existed if it wasn’t for state subsidised housing!).

If the EU started an ambitious programme to provide more subsidised housing in Eastern Europe, it would help to ease the overcrowding in parts of Western Europe, while providing housing and work opportunities for young Eastern Europeans who are presently flooding west and competing for the limited number of low-skilled jobs with low-income Europeans and recent Muslim immigrants.

The Liberal Peril

Christchurch's Press seems to take a perverse delight in belittling European New Zealanders in its immigration articles (or should that be advertorials?).

In a recent feature article on East Asian Immigration "Aiming for a multicultural NZ" Saturday November 17) the idea that East Asians should assimilate into the local culture is questioned on the basis that, well, European New Zealand culture is inferior:

"And what should integration mean? To put it bluntly, do we still expect Asian immigrants to turn themselves into "good sorts" if they want to be accepted - to dump several thousand years of culture and refinement and adopt a life revolving around malls, barbecues, loud cars, touch rugby and a few beers."

If this isn't cultural loathing I don't know what is - lets take the most banal aspects of European New Zealand culture and compare them with the best aspects of East Asian culture. You could easily turn this statement on its head and it would be equally valid.

"And what should integration mean? To put it bluntly, do we still expect European New Zealanders to turn themselves into cultural quislings if they want to be accepted - to dump several thousand years of Classical/Judeo-Christian culture and refinement and adopt a life revolving around overcrowded cities, monotonous menus, karaoke, Marshall arts movies and a snobbish dislike of manual labour."

The article then takes a right-liberal tack and attacks the country for failing to integrate economically with non-Western markets:

"While other small nations like Iceland, Finland and Singapore have increased their average economic "connectedness," as measured by exports and foreign investing, from 42% to 89% of gross domestic product over the past 15 years, we are the only developing country to exporting less, managing to drop back to 3 points to just 39%."

In an article about immigration these examples are totally irrelevant, since when have Iceland and Finland been bastions of multicultural capitalism?

Finland has one of the lowest rates of immigration in the developed world. Its export success is more likely to do with its monocultural corporatism than cultural diversity.

While New Zealand should perhaps learn more about Asian markets, and offer more Chinese language courses, some Asian countries could also be doing a lot more to open up their markets.

Before Ms Clarke rushes into a free trade deal with the Chinese, shouldn't she wait until China cuts back its farming subsidies and stops messing about with the Yuan?

The article also has some revealing comment from Auckland University Professor Manying Ip, who perhaps inadvertently, make a good case for avoiding a free trade deal with China:

"Ip says the rapid rise in mainland Chinese immigrants, which is only likely to increase if New Zealand manages to seal a free-trade deal next year, is creating new integration hurdles. Immigrants from ex-colonial nations like India, Hong Kong and Singapore had some preparation for living here. The mainland Chinese have not just greater language and cultural differences, but a worldview still shaped by years of communism.

"Ip says they can feel fiercely patriotic and defensive of their homeland. They also have the confidence of coming from the new world superpower. Where earlier Asian immigrants might have felt more pressure to fit in, the mainland Chinese could prove more assertive of their right to their own way."

Having posed some serious questions on immigration, the article then predictably returns to banality with some inane comment from a left-liberal British immigrant:

"As for the British immigrant, what made her decide to come to Christchurch?The Englishness of the place surely? Well, actually it was discovering you could now get a good Thai takeaway here. A big change from the hicksville of just a few decades ago she says."

Funny how these Islington types always end up looking for non-western cuisine in western countries. If you like Thai, what's wrong with Bangkok?

Immigration and labour shortages

Immigration solves labour shortages, this is common knowledge right?

Well not if this recent survey by NZ Consumer Magazine is anything to go by.

Consumer magazine has surveyed trade rates in 18 centres and found they were significantly higher in Auckland than in South Island centres like Christchurch and Dunedin. For example, in Auckland, auto-mechanics charge $60-111 per hour, in Christchurch $45-81 per hour, and in Dunedin just $40-68 per hour.

Plumbers in Auckland charge $56—79 per hour while in Dunedin only $41-62 per hour. The survey also notes that Auckland has a significant problem with unregistered cowboy tradesmen.

According to the logic of pro-immigration economists, diverse multi-cultural Auckland should have plenty of eager tradesmen willing to work for modest rates, while tradesmen should cost an arm and leg in white bread South Island cities with lower immigration levels.

Critics will argue that living cost are higher in Auckland, so tradesmen have to charge higher rates to make a living. This is true to some extent, but living cost are also partly caused by immigration.

Saying immigration solves labour shortages is a highly simplistic, dare I say ideological argument which only applies to a few industries, especially unskilled and non-essential ones, and does not appear to be much help in solving the labour shortage in the skilled manual trades.

Some thoughts on John Gray's "Al Qaeda and what it means to be modern"

In Al Qaeda and What it Means to Be Modern John Gray makes some excellent points about the naivety of the liberal right in believing that the world can be re-made in a western image.

However, while he acknowledges the cultural distinctiveness of the West he denies westerners the opportunity to protect themselves by limiting immigration.

Gray succinctly states that globalisation is not making the world more uniform:

"As societies throughout the world become more modern, they do not thereby become more similar. Often they move further apart. In these circumstances, we need to think afresh about how regimes and ways of life that will always be different can come to coexist in peace."

This is sort of thinking that traditional U.S conservatives have been promoting for the last one hundred years but is a message that Liberals, from Woodrow Wilson to Tony Blair, have been consistently ignoring. Most of the World is not like the West and doesn’t want to be like the West.

In military affairs Gray takes the traditional conservative view that enemies can never be eliminated, only contained:

"There cannot be tolerance so long as terrorism is unchecked. Dealing with it is a precondition of any kind of civilised existence and requires courage, skill and - at times – ruthlessness. Yet in the new kind of conventional war that is now being fought there is no prospect of victory."

The neo-conservative idea that threats like terrorism and drugs can defeated in all out, short-term offensives is another utopian idea with a very short shelf life. Another vital point that Gray makes is the importance of overpopulation in global problems:

"The human prospect is shaped by rising human numbers, mounting competition for natural resources and the spread of weapons of mass destruction …Interacting with historic ethnic and religious enmities, they argur conflicts as destructive as any in the twentieth century."

Unfortunately, on the topic of immigration Gray backs down from his post liberal position and criticises ‘far right’ political parties that seek to promote limited immigration. Surely, if western culture is unique, and is threatened by global overpopulation and terrorism, then the West is perfectly entitled to try and limit immigration from non-western countries.

The eminent scientist Gareth Hardin has made a very strong argument that countries need to be made responsible for their own overpopulation problems and that lack of border controls will set up a ‘tragedy of the commons’ situation where countries pass their overpopulation problems onto their neighbours.

If Gray expects to be taken seriously by conservatives then he needs to address Hardin’s hard-headed argument. Furthermore, contrary to what Gray suggests, political parties don’t have to play on ‘racist fears’ of voters to win support for limited immigration policies.

Opinion poles indicate that most people already support limited immigration. The reason we don’t have limited immigration policies in place already is because political parties are deliberately putting big business interests ahead of majority interests.

Gray himself acknowledges that western businesses are a key factor in driving immigration:

"Remember Voltaire’s quip: ‘The comfort of the rich depends on abundant supply of the poor."

In type-casting limited immigration advocates as ignorant populists, Gray alienates the kind of people that are most likely to take his other, more hard-headed, arguments seriously. Its high time self-styled iconoclasts like John Gray stopped squirming around politically sensitive issues like immigration and reveal what they actually think.

New lows for the liberal right

Increasingly exasperated by popular disillusionment over the Iraq conflict and the failure of Bush's immigration amnesty bill in the US, the pro-war, pro-immigration liberal right has decided to blame (wait for it ...) western democracy!

According to Times columnist Gerard Baker, in a recent opinion column, "How paranoid little Napoleons took over the United States," democracy is now passe:

"Democracy, Winston Churchill famously observed, is the worst form of government ever devised -except for all the others, well he was right about the first part."

Having rejected democracy as a workable system of government for America, Baker then has the audacity to use democracy as a rationale for failed neoconservative regime change in Iraq:

"A central tenet of neoconservativism has always been that promoting democracy around the world is not only morally right, but also in the long-term interest of peace and stability."


With the Democrats and old-right Republicans dismissed as irresponsible, anti-democratic populists for wanting to pull out of the unwinnable war in Iraq, Baker decides to attack mainstream America for opposing immigration amnesty:

"President Bush had tried, honourably and rightly, to get a Reform Bill through Congress that would have regularised the status of 12 million illegal immigrants, mostly Latinos, as well as enforcing bordersecurity more effectively."

"The Bill was defeated by a roar of nativist and, at times disguised racist hysteria from the American heartland. Little Napoleons on TV and talk radio strutted and howled, denoucing the President and his supporters for surrendering to a cultural takeover by Mexicans."

A piece of paraphrased advice for Baker - you can insult some of the people, some of the time, but you can't insult all of the people all of the time.

Human directionals

The favourite human interest story on New Zealand television news last Friday night was the new US fad of "sign spinning" - apparently a new twist on the rather depressing human directionals trend noted by Steve Sailer.

Apparently a couple of American college graduates have made a tidy sum of money from teaching the sign-holders to put a "positive spin" on their signs, as the media usually likes to do with stories about wage rates and immigration issues.

Personally, I would have thought sign spinning would be an even harder way to make a few dollars than sign holding. How long can you spin a sign for? (at least in the 30s depression they had easy to hold sandwich boards), and how soon before the novelty wears off among the public?

Yet more service industry insanity coming to a western country near you!