New Zealand has a better immigration story to tell – Jonathan Ayling
While New Zealand has been spared many of the tougher immigration issues faced by other countries, we must still think carefully about the type of immigration a small, liberal democracy such as ours requires, Jonathan Ayling writes. Photo / 123rf
When Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told a BusinessNZ audience last week that on immigration, “when faced with a choice between social stability and your bottom line, I will choose the former every single time”, he put his finger on the argument New Zealand needs to have.
For years, immigration has been defended primarily in economic terms. Workers, growth and tax revenue matter. But a country is not only an economy. It is a society, and societies depend on trust, shared habits and the confidence that newcomers are joining something more than a labour market.
New Zealand’s geography spares us some of the pressures seen in Britain, Europe and the United States. It does not spare us the harder question: what kind of immigration does a small, liberal, democratic country need?
Two extremes now dominate the discussion. One side treats concern about immigration levels, or about who we admit, as proof of racism. The other responds by embracing provocative anti-immigration rhetoric (butter chicken, anyone?).
Most New Zealanders are stranded in the middle.
New Zealand’s history gives us every reason to welcome immigration, but no reason to pretend immigration policy is an act of charity rather than an exercise in national judgment. New Zealand needs immigration. It also needs standards, confidence and the courage to say clearly that not every form of immigration is equal.
There is a utilitarian case for immigration: our birth rate is too low to supply the workforce an ageing country needs. That is true, but it treats immigrants as instruments of economic necessity. There is a better story for us to tell.
Almost everywhere else had been inhabited by humans for centuries, often millennia, before any people reached these islands. New Zealand was among the last major land masses to be settled, around 1300. That does not reduce Māori connection to the land, but it does place our national story in context. It is one foundation on which a diverse country can build unity.
But remembering we are a nation of immigrants does not mean pretending New Zealand is a blank space. Immigrants are not invited to join nothing, they are invited to join a nation, with its own history, languages, institutions and cultural assumptions.
Too often, we retreat into a false morality in which judgment itself is treated as suspect. We pretend that because every person has equal dignity, every immigration application has equal merit. That is nonsense and everyone knows it.
No society can act that way and survive. Immigration already discriminates by age, income and qualifications. The question is not whether we make judgments, but whether we judge only by economics.
To be clear, that has nothing to do with skin colour, surname or birthplace. Many of the people who most cherish fairness, hard work, self-reliance, family, lawfulness and integrity in New Zealand were not born here. Many immigrants understand this country’s cultural inheritance more clearly than people whose families have lived here for generations and who have been taught, often by our own institutions, to sneer at it. Race tells us nothing about a person’s civic beliefs.
Religious and political doctrines, however, directly relate to the ideas an individual holds and should be taken into account. What shapes social cohesion is the moral framework people bring with them: how they understand law, women, violence, speech, pluralism, family, work, welfare, corruption and the boundary between religion and the state. The issue is not blood, it is belief. Not whether someone looks like us, but whether they will help sustain the free, lawful, self-governing society they are asking to join.
The objection is obvious: so much for his tolerance. But tolerance has never meant indifference to the conditions that make tolerance possible. A free society can accommodate deep disagreement. It cannot remain free if people reject the rules that keep disagreement peaceful. The issue is not disagreement, but whether we are able to play by common rules.
A liberal society cannot be indifferent to illiberal ideas. It cannot insist that immigration is essential, then refuse to ask whether those entering the country are likely to strengthen or weaken the society they are joining. Many immigrants enhance the civic culture they join. But others bring incompatible assumptions. The difference lies not in race or ancestry, but in the ideas and beliefs they hold.
Refusing to acknowledge these simple truths leaves the debate to those who will draw cruder distinctions. If mainstream politics cannot say New Zealand has the right to choose immigrants who serve its interests and respect its way of life, voters may turn to populist brutes instead.
That is why I believe this debate is important. Public consent depends on legitimacy and trust. People will accept immigration when they believe it strengthens our society, not simply our economy.
The most stable, least-racist and most prosperous societies were not built by accident; they weren’t built on racial or religious homogeneity either. They were built on ideas: equal citizenship, the rule of law, freedom of conscience, personal responsibility, ordered liberty and the conviction that people are more than members of a tribe.
Immigration policy should defend those ideas too. We should welcome those who come here to work, build and belong. But openness is not indifference. A confident country can be open without being naive.
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