Bring me your poorest (they’re the most creative)
By Vincent Heeringa,
As the United States continues apace its determined effort to shut its borders to foreigners with potential connections to anything out of the ordinary, New Zealand has an opportunity.
The opportunity is represented by names such as Ilya Rozhdestvensky, Jack Yan, Asa Lind-Chong, Jason Sutter and Mardo El-noor—all peope who grace the pages of this terrific issue of Idealog. Russian, Chinese, Swedish, American and Iraqi, these creative Kiwis are all at the cutting edge of their crafts, earning export dollars and securing New Zealand’s place as one of the most commercially creative outposts in the world.
If New Zealand’s future as a creative and enterprising nation concerns you, then join with me in resoundingly denouncing the scurrilous mix of statistics and prejudice perpetrated by New Zealand First and (disappointingly) Deborah Coddington in North & South. Their worldview as a country of innocent people and cockle-shelled beaches set upon by a horde of thieving, anti-democratic and AIDS-ridden strangers. Keeping out this foreign muck ought to be the job of any right-thinking New Zealander.
We are all immigrants, which makes migrant bashing such a hypocritical occupation. But just as the price of freedom is constant vigilance, there’s a need to constantly beat the drum for easy and open migration. Recent government moves to further restrict the requirements for immigration reflect the influence that New Zealand First’s redneck constituency has on policy. Thankfully Immigration Minister David Cunliffe has done a laudable job of freeing up rules for the ‘right’ sort of migrant. The new Act is getting tentative thumbs up from immigration advocates and employer groups alike.
But there’s still screwy thinking going: the focus of the change has been on tinkering with restrictions. The core idea seems to be that millions of people want to come here, so how do we filter the best. Instead, the idea should be that there are millions of great people out there, how do we get them to choose New Zealand? New Zealand’s a business: how do we get the smartest, hardest working, most creative people working for us? As an employer of some of the very same people, I think I know the answer: you search, you cajole, and you convince them that this is indeed the best place in the world to be. Now that would be an immigration policy with a difference.
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