This topic is a hardy political perennial, but despite the importance of the immigration issue, it is a subject given superficial coverage in the media, and is used as a political football by politicians, and commentators. Certain politicians in New Zealand, notably Winston Peters, but there are many others, have sought to capitalise on immigration problems for publicity and political gain. Unfortunately Winston has a habit of homing in on a few particular cases, such as Ahmed Zoui and the recent ex-Iraqui diplomat row, and we all know that the single case makes bad law (as I have argued similarly in my euthanasia article) . Winston, and many others, also have a habit of considering asylum and immigration as the same issue - they are not. Unfortunately too there is often an apparent racist overtone to many of their comments, which has meant that anyone who wishes to see restrictions in the number of immigrants have been tarred with the same racest brush, making discussion on immigration fraught with shades of racism and political corrrectness; an emotional reaction to a matter that needs much less emotion and a good deal more logic.
Those reading this article having already read some of my other articles will have noted my concerns about immigration policy in New Zealand. These concerns have been related to the widly swinging number of immigrants due to the equally violent swings in government policies, the lack of help for immigrants when they arive, the misrepresentation of New Zealand and its prospects to prospective immigrants, the uncontrolled immigration consultancy industry, the booming population and the non-provision of the necessary infrastructure to support immigrants and the population already here etc. etc. To put it simply - we don't have a sustainable population policy.
I shall start by placing here a table of what I see to be the pros and cons of immigration. Many of these will apply to many other countries, some are more specifically New Zealand issues. These pros and cons have been written down as they have occured to me, they are not meant to be comprehensive, and I am sure readers will be able to think of some others, but I thought it might be a good basis for discussion and amplification in the rest of this article. (In addition I am very proud of this table, because it is the first one on my internet site. For those of you who have never dabbled in html I can assure you that if I had to write things in Chinese I would scarcely think it likely to be more difficult - for instance it took me two hours of hard thought and internet research to find out how to make the table columns equal sized. (It didn't happen on its own, for some reason, and the answer is absurdly simple, when you know how)
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Increased national wealth | No or minimal increased personal wealth |
| A more diverse and interesting society | Possible cross-cultural problems later |
| Need for immigrants with skills not available locally | No incentive to improve training of local people |
| Taking menial jobs local people don't wish to do | We shouldn't be treating immigrants as second-class citizens |
| Bringing capital for business investment | This can sometimes amount to little more than selling citizenship |
| Private immigration consultants can relieve government of an expense and provide skills | Is open to abuse and immigrants are open to misrepresentation and overcharging. |
| High immigration can stimulate an economy | High immigration can cause ghettoisation and social stress |
| High levels of immigration presupposes there is plenty of room for everyone | Immigrants have to live, work and play, they need room - what value quiet enjoyment of beaches, parks and countryside? |
| New Zealand is "underpopulated" | New Zealand is overpopulated for its resources. |
| Improve the economy by stimulating construction, services etc. | Cause an artificial stimulation to the economy with some undesirable effects, for instance increased interest rates, a demand for imports and deletarious effect on balance of payments |
| We can import skilled workers and professionals from developing countries, to make up for our shortfall, or those that emigrate. | It is likely that such professionals and workers are more urgently needed in their own countries. |
| Helps trade by bringing foreign language speakers to this country, with their cultural understanding of their own country. | Language barriers in education, health, law etc. can be major problems in isolating new immigrants, and extra expense and work for the country |
| Provides a younger population which will help us cope with the expenses and social problems associated with an aging population | This is not sustainable, either the population has to grow for ever or the immigrant population will age in their turn |
| New Zealand has always been an immigrant nation, immigration has made this country what it is. | We have to protect the standard of living and the style of life of people already here. |
If you have read some of the articles on my internet site you cannot help but notice that my main concern is that our society lives sustainably within its means. It means that the world we leave for our children is a better world than the one we inherited. And with our good example to act on, they in turn will leave a better world for their children. Only in this way is the peace, prosperity and happiness of the vast majority of our human kind going to be ensured. To me, this is more an ethical or moral value than an economic, social or legal one. But the problem, as I see it, is that immigration has mostly been seen for its short term economic benefits, which come about by the stimulation of the economy by increasing numbers of people, rather than any rational examination of the needs of the country over the next few generations. Who gains by promoting high levels of immigration?
Business, government and local government make a powerful triumverate, and of course if the a lot of the population like the economic activity, it makes opposition to high immigration rates rather difficult to sustain. But there are excellent reasons for concern about these high levels of immigration, and this article goes on to examine these.
The problem is - is what is good for government, local authority leaders and business in itself good for the country? You might say, with all those people supporting immigration, and the fact that business does appear to boom, it must be good for the country. But is this true? If you check out my pros and cons arguments in the table, there are actually a good number of issues that tend to be neglected in arguing about immigration. To put it crudely, not everything that is good for business is necessarily good for the country and, tellingly, many of the problems with immigration are long term issues, whilst the possible benefits are more immediate. With politics and business, short term expediency will always outweigh long-term judgement. It comes back to my ethical issues, examining immigration purely from an economic perspective is like judging the health of an individual merely by taking the temperature. Economics is only one, relatively small aspect of our human society; in fact day to day existence has many more important issues. How do we get on with our neighbours? Is our family life happy and robust? Do we enjoy the work we do? Are our towns and cities nice places in which to live? Are we looking after the countryside? Is pollution a problem? What about global warming? Depletion of resources? Race relations? Crime? Can we get to and from work without too much hassle? What value peace and quiet and the quarter-acre section? etc. Whilst there are economic issues related to all these human activities, economics cannot be the sole judge of what is worthwhile. This is the ethics or the morals of the argument.
It is very hard to find out from anyone, including economists, exactly what the value of immigration to a society is. What we do have to remember is that we can't use our historical experience to guide us in the present day. When the US was being settled in the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, there were still large areas of the continent relatively undeveloped, similarly in Australia, Canada, and here in much smaller New Zealand. But this no longer applies. Most of our societies are in fact overcrowded. Not always in pure numbers - for instance our own country would appear to be lightly populated - but in the size of our ecological footprint. You might be surprised, though I am not, that the New Zealander's ecological footprint is the world's largest - i.e. we are the greediest users of the world's resources. (There is a reference below to carrying capacity and international comparisons to confirm this statement) . We take up an indordinate amount of space - either on national terms or international terms. Our need for energy, food, metals, oil, cattle feedstock, marine resources, holiday destinations, forest, air and water is on a scale unimaginable just a hundred years ago. There are areas of settled America, and much of Europe and Asia that on a local level are completely unsustainable. If you read my review of Jared Diamond's book, Collapse or better still read the book itself, you can see the imminent problems associated with our burgeoning population in so many regions of the world. 
So what is the value of immigration to the country as a whole and to the individual? Figures suggest that the economic benefit of migration is very minor. For instance in the UK figures have shown that the net economic benefit of immigration is about £7 per head per annum, hardly a figure to get excited about. Statistics can be used many ways, for instance the UK treasury calculated in the year 1999/2000 that immigrants contributes about £2.5 billion to the economy, but conveniently didn't mention that the same year the government ran healthy surpluses , and everyone else also contributed in the same proportion! There has been in the run-up to the general election in the UK some discussion about immigration. There will be, if immigration continues at the same rate as now, an extra 6.5 million inhabitants of the UK by 2030. The last time I was in the UK it seemed an inordinately busy and cramped island with nearly 60 million people living cheek by jowel. I cannot believe that politicians of any sort should consider that the UK is underpopulated. I find it truly bizarre. Of course in New Zealand we have much less people, but at the same time, if our figures for economic benefit were in any way similar, and we have no reason to think they're not, is that trivial benefit worth the other associated costs and stresses associated with high immigration levels? There is a lack of consistency in economic, social and immigration policy that has been the hallmark of politics in New Zealand for at least thirty years. Just ten years ago the New Zealand statisticians were predicting a New Zealand population of about 4.25 million in 2030, but with changes in immigration policy, and particularly the huge waves of immigration in the mid-nineties and again in the early years of this century, we are approaching that figure already. How can a country so change its policies in such a fundamental way in such a short time? And what searching examination of these policies has been undertaken? None, just a simplistic belief in the value of immigration, the numbers plucked out of thin air, or from consultation with a government contracted astrologer.
Statisticians are quick to point out that over the years, the natural increase of the population through excess of births over deaths has been a more important driver of population increases than immigration in New Zealand - fair enough, but in the last ten years this has not been the case, and in the past, even relatively low levels of immigration added to natural increase can make considerable differences in population numbers. Additionally if immigration keeps to the rate it has recently, and both major parties seem to be committed to this policy, then future increases are going to be very significant, and we will be approaching a population of about 5.5 million by 2030. This is a 35% increase in total population in twenty five years, equivalent to 20 million increase in the UK or 80 million in the USA. In just one and a half generations we are going to have to find room for an extra one and a half Aucklands or one and half South Islands. And we are going to have to do that whilst feeding them, keeping them healthy, providing sufficient education, electricity, housing, transport and all the other infrastructure required in a modern, wealthy society. It will be a truly stupendous effort, worthy of the greatest wonder, but exactly what for?
Referring back to my review of Collapse, Jarod Diamond makes the point that the smaller the country, the richer, the lower the population growth, the richer. And thinking on this, it makes sense. The resources of any country, its air, water, energy, land, climate, marine, lake etc. are fixed. Whilst technocological innovation can make us more efficient users of each resource, the simple fact is that modern societies are rapacious users of these resources. Some are non-renewable, and will deplete, but even so-called renewable resources can become depleted too, we can think here in New Zealand in particular our fishing resources and our mindless destruction of such much of our native forest resource. The more people that are reliant on this basically fixed amount of natural wealth, the more the value to each person is diluted. Of course in modern societies, we can make wealth by many other means, such as manufacturing, services, tourism etc. so that we can import such services from other countries. But I am not sure exactly how this applies to New Zealand - for all this country's endeavour to diversify its economy, about 65% of our total wealth is reliant on the rural sector, the value of which is being increasingly diluted on a per capita basis. You might then think that immigrants would be needed in this sector most of all, but I am sure it is true that very few immigrants work in the rural sector, yet this is far and away the most valuable economic sector in New Zealand.
For instance we see this in one of my other pet subjects, electricity generation. We have had a superb hydroelectricity resource which at one time met about 80% of our electrical generation capapacity, it is now gradually diminishing to about 60% as our population continues its inexorable rise and our demands for power continue to increase. We are having difficulties now in providing the power for our present population, how are we going to do this for an extra 1.5 million people? We are beginning to run out of options There is not much enthusiasm for vast new hydro resources, even if they could be found (Buller River, Motu River?), we have only enough gas to last ten years, and we are supposedly a nuclear-free country and coal is grossly polluting. Wind power is a good alternative, but burgeoning populations will continue to make it more and more difficult to provide eco-friendly, inexpensive power. A smaller population will be a definite advantage to us. As an aside, I cannot but be amused by the protests of those being affected by the proposed transmission lines to Auckland. Whilst I can sympathise with their plight, this has come about from the foreseeable consequences of a burgeoning Auckland population (increasingly fuelled by immigration), a short-sighted and poor planning structure (thinking of rural subdivision and suburban sprawl) and a lack of energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives. All these things are critiqued in other parts of my web site. Power pylons are just another facet of an expanding, energy dependent population - get used to it and stop moaning (or preferrably deal with the underlying issues).
We have now had two large waves of immigration in the last ten years. If immigration was such an economic boon, why is it that we now have the largest balance of payments deficits ever? Whilst I would not entirely blame immigration for causing this, it has been a major part of the problem. I would say something like this.
There seems to be an accepted, but mistaken, opinion presently that New Zealand is "underpopulated" and that with increasing numbers of people we will somehow be a bigger player on the world stage. I could never understand that point of view, if we had four times our present population we would still be a small player. An extra 1.5 million won't make the slightest difference. Just last year I read a letter in the Dominion Post from a building company executive who suggested that a population of 5.5 million in 15 years time would be just right. I am highly sceptical of those with vested interests (builders have a strong vested interest in high levels of immigration) who try to shape opinion in this way. I think he has been counting the number of houses his company can build in 15 years, and I came to the conclusion from this that he must be about 50 years old now. He will be retiring with all his wealth, while his and our children will be struggling to cope with this untenable increase in population. I have seen similar similar reasoning from timber companies who are finding the economic going rather tough recently, one suggested that an increase of populatoin to 6 million would stimulate the local market for timber. Of course, he is right, but is the stimulation of the timber market the only criterion by which we should judge the worth or not of immigration? These suggestions are lunacy, and yet I have read no major criticism of these sorts of suggestions. I have to assume that the public have yet to appreciate why this is lunacy, hence this article. The most practicable way in which we can ensure our presence on the international stage is to show the world how best to run a sustainable and wealthy economy. High levels of immigration are going to make that much more difficult to achieve.
Recently I have been doing locum GP work around Wellington. I was quickly reminded of the variety of immigrants to this part of the world, Russians, Armenians, Brits, Iranian, Indian, Bangladeshi, Hong Kong, Cambodian, Greek etc. I am sure that many, indeed most, immigrants do their best for themselves and for their families, and in so doing are helping their new country. Yet I couldn't help but notice the difficulty that many immigrants have in settling here and in particular a severe language barrier for most of the older immigrants. This also affected my practice, the difficulty of communication made me very aware of the likelihood of misunderstanding and errors. The amount of time that health workers have to spend with people with poor English language skills is considerable, it can easily double the length of an otherwise fairly straighforward consultation, and the same thing must happen in the hospital setting, in education, social services etc. There has been a widespread acknowledgement of New Zealand's poor record in helping immigrants get on their feet, by not investing suffiently in language classes, work help etc. In fact in the mid nineties, I think you could fairly state that many thousands of immigrants were shabbily treated by the government and the social agencies at that time. Many hundreds of highly trained doctors came to New Zealand, to be promised great opportunities here, only to find their qualifications weren't recognised. They had great difficulties getting the necessary qualifications here, cultural and language barriers making this even more difficult, and many ended up in menial jobs, driving taxis being the well known example. I understand that hundreds of professional immigrant engineers met exactly the same fate. I give a reference below to the a Listener article entitle The Unfriendly Isles relating the experence of immigrants to this country, for instance only half of a cohort of skilled Chinese migrants were in gainful employment several years after immigrating, and of those that were, many were in menial jobs. Apart from being a scandalous waste of human resources, it is a recipe for future social unrest.
So when New Zealanders like myself call for care in importing people without the necessary language skills, or who think we should be careful to allow immigrants to assimilate into our society, which can take two generations, this is not a racial slur, but a cultural and practical concern. From my part, anyone who is living here legally has exactly the same rights as me, an immigrant of nearly twenty years, or any New Zealander born here, or indiginous Maori. But I firmly believe it is in all our interests, including the interests of the immigrants themselves, that we take our time, that we spend the necessary resources to help new immigrants settle and that we keep immigration rates at a low enough level to allow us to do this. To allow high levels of immigration when help is not available, or where social and cultural distress results is a recipe for disaffection or worse. In particular in New Zealand, which so far appears to have failed in over 150 years to come to a satisfactory conclusion in Maori - Pakeha relationships, it is a mischievous simplification to think that immigration of so many people from so many different cultures can be automatically assumed to be a success, without putting in a great deal more effort and thought into making it so.
I should add too that all societies have some stress points. For New Zealand, generally, we have been very lucky, and this is partly due to the relatively laid back and stress free life style that New Zealander's enjoy (partly related, I must point out, to New Zealand's low population), and while economic circumstances are favourable I don't see anything to disturb this happy state of affairs. But if you have read other parts of my internet site, I am not quite so sanguine about the future. If we do have major environmental issues, or economic problems from the depletion of oil, then this will much higher stress on our population. I am reasonably optimistic about this in New Zealand, we are a small enough country for us to know, as individuals, that we are all in this together, but I would have more serious concerns in regard to other countries, for instance the UK, and Europe and the USA, where immigrant problems have reared up several times previously. But these sort of thoughts for the future should put us on our guard. Even today I read about insurance scams involving immigrant communities. Now I am quite sure that insurance scams have been around for a long time, the favourite one here is torching an old unecomic building, especially if it has some sort of preservation order on it, but the telling remark was that these immigrants are being targeted because they are finding things tough in New Zealand, they are poor or out of work, and they are vulnerable to being pressured to earning an easy buck. So much for the economic advantage of immigration, why are these people not working or finding a use for their skills? Of course, I don't know the proportion of immigrants in such distress, but the fact that it is happening at all is of concern.
In regard to immigration helping offset an aging population, this too seems to be putting the cart before the horse. What is wrong with an aging population? This is going to be the natural state of affairs in any mature, non-enlarging society. This is in fact what we should be aiming to achieve, rather than trying to postpone in a demographically ingenuous and an ecologically impossible manner. What is wrong with economists when they keep promoting growth as the answer to all our economic problems? The inability of economists to recognise the restraints of the real world on population and economic growth is a major concern, and suggests there is something badly wrong with the teaching of economics and in research in economics - there is a narrowness with which economists view the world and a hubris that economics is sufficient to solve the world's problems. When economists take on board depletion accounting, environmental accounting, quality of life accounting, cultural accounting and every other facet of human existance accounting then perhaps economics will be able to guide us. But in the meantime my grammar school maths tells me that a perpetually increasing population is impossible, and that we might as well face this fact now whilst our environment is still salvageable rather than postpone it to some vague future date when our descendants will be faced with impossible problems.
When countries like Italy and Japan are no longer growing because births no longer outweigh deaths, there is nothing wrong with this state of affairs. If you read Collapse it is what has allowed the Tikopians to survive for so long on their small Pacific island, and the Japanese in the Edo period to sustain their economy and repair the environmental damage to their country, particularly the deforestation. It is what every single country in the world should be aiming to do, and soon. Instead of economists mischievously trying to postpone the inevitable they should be putting their thinking caps on and trying to work out how such a mature society would best function. It will almost certainly mean older folk working for longer, perhaps until their mid-seventies or eighties. Not full time, but say fifteen to twenty hours per week. There are many many jobs taken by youngster, such as shop workers, posties, reception work etc. that older folk could easily do. Younger people will have though to be better trained to do the more demanding physical and intellectual work that wouldn't be fair to impose on older people. It could be great benefit to society to see this happen. Wages for younger people will rise as they do more meaningful work, and they won't have to spend so much money on the older folk who will mostly be looking after themselves. There will certainly be many details to work out, economists can help here, it's the bigger picture that they can't see.
As mentioned above, New Zealand is not the only country to be struggling with immigration policy. In America recently you may have read about the local vigilantes who are taking to patrolling their border with Mexico to try and stop so much illegal immigration (the "Minuteman" project). One would think that with a right-wing, reactionary Republican president and party in power that illegal immigration would be one thing high on the agenda. But no, secretly the republicans, and by definition, big business, love illegal immigrants. They will work for practically nothing, they can be abused or dealt with unfairly and they won't complain, and they can be sacked equally easily. As illegal aliens, they have no legal redress. They are the nearest thing to modern day slavery that Americans have devised. Illegal immigration benefits a few rich people and businesses, who have a lot of political clout, but the rest of the community have to pick up the pieces. It might also be the place to point out that legal immigration to the US is about 1.1 million p.a.. This level of immigration is causing concern to many, and there is a move to reduce this number to about 300,000 p.a. (in New Zealand terms this would be about 17,000 immigrants p.a. , reducing to about 6,000 p.a.). At present rates of immigration the US population will rise from nearly 294 million to about 400 million by 2050. Read Collapse and be concerned for the US. I have already mentioned the UK above. 
In Denmark, immigration issues have had a major influence in promoting right wing parties, and following elections in 2001 and 2005 the country is now run by a liberal-conservative coalition, with 24 members of the 170 seat parliament belonging to an extreme right wing racist party. This comes against a background of 200,000 moslem immigrants to Denmark. They are blamed for a lot of criminal activity, sexual assaults and the unemployment rate in Danish moslem immigrants is three times the rate of other Danes. Now Denmark, which would previously be considered one of Europes more liberal and tolerant socieites, has some of the strictist immigration laws in Europe. A consequence of this is that couples, if one of the spouses have been refused entry in Denmark as is now happening, are having to live across the water in Malmo in Sweden and commuting via the Oeresund bridge-tunnel. This policy change is causing great friction in the Nordic countries.
New Zealand spends about one quarter of one percent of its GDP on overseas aid. This is one of the lowest numbers in the OECD. Denmark and other countries gives one percent away. New Zealanders should be ashamed that we spend so little on help those innumerable people in the world who live in demeaning and absolute poverty, with infectious disease and undernutrition, poor water supplies, and inadequate sanitation. The United Nations has requested that all wealthy countries give at least 0.7% in foreign aid. I think we should at a minimum provide 1% and I would like to see this nearer 2%. What has this to do with immigration? Well, partly people come to New Zealand to better their circumstances. If we, along with other western nations, help the poorer countries where many of our immigrants come from , we will be reducing the need for migration. Additionally this might certainly help in reducing the number of refugees we need to give asylum to (and here New Zealand's record is much better. I am proud of New Zealand's record in providing asylum, though unfortunately there has been a good deal of criticism as to the amount of help they receive after their arrival). To those who would say that we have many issues to deal with locally, in our own country, this is true, but in there is no way that our social and poverty problems compare to the severity in many overseas areas, especially Africa, but also closer to home in the Pacific Islands. But in addition I would say that we will be spending the money locally, on our co-inhabitants of this planet, this infinitely isolated island floating in the aether of an uncaring universe. We are all in this together, I've said this before, and it won't be the last time either.
Immigration is a major issue for most advanced countries. Undoubtedly, immigration can have positive aspects for the host country (for instance, our health system would be in tatters but for immigrant nurses, caregivers and doctors) but I am of the opinion that the problems with immigration, and more especially high levels of immigration, are being downplayed by some short sighted and self interested political and economic parties. These parties have failed to demonstrate long-term benefits of immigration and have downplayed the likely problems. What is important to understand is that these problems are not the immigrants fault. It is up to the host country to ensure that new people who are welcomed into the country are looked after and helped to integrate into the community, and that immigration policies are humane and sustainable. But world wide experience would suggest that large numbers of immigrants from such varied cultural backgrounds, don't fully integrate into their adopted country for a long time, often several generations. New Zealand's recent record in caring for immigrants has not been good, and this must be a concern for our future social well-being. But this is not my only concern, it is basically that the world is very full of people. That even our own, relatively lightly populated country can be stressed by increasing numbers of people, as we are already finding out in shoddy construction in Auckland, traffic gridlock, plundered coasts, crowded hospitals and schools, and major investment needed in transport and electricity.
So what would I like to see in immigration and population policy? Here are some things - it is not an exhaustive list, but enough to be going on with:
