Tuesday last week marked the fifth anniversary of the on going Syrian Civil War that has seen approximately seven million civilians displaced within Syria, just over four million emigrate from their homeland in search of relative safety abroad, involvement of the U.S.A, Britain, and Russia to destroy the opportunistic Syrian involvement of ISIS through military airstrikes, and a partial ceasefire that is, for now, just about holding.
The Scale of the Refugee Crisis
Countries around the world have pledged to help resettle or rehome a huge number of refugees, although an enormous number remain. Germany, for example, has taken in over one million refugees, and Chancellor Angela Merkel is now paying the political price as Germany’s right wing political parties look to opportunistically seize upon growing anti-refugee sentiment and make gains in regional, and then potentially national, elections (see Jess Thompson’s article in the current issue of Critic). Also, neighbouring countries, such as Turkey (2.7 million), Lebanon (1 million), Jordan (650,000), Iraq (250,000), and Egypt (120,000) (all figures taken from the UN Refugee Agency) also have had to deal with a huge amount of the displaced Syrian population fleeing their countries, although due to the difficulty obtaining employment in Syria’s neighbouring countries the goal for many refugees has been an arduous journey to Europe.
New Zealand’s Help So Far
New Zealand will allow refugee status to 750 refugees over the next three years, a number that has not increased since 1987, although a further 600 emergency places have been given specifically to Syrian refugees as a response to the situation, which is the worst refugee crisis since World War II. When asked why the quota hasn’t increased in that period, (from 1987-2016 New Zealand’s population has increased 42%) Minister for Immigration, Michael Woodhouse, said: “Well, that is factually correct, [although] when we compare ourselves to other nations taking quota refugees, we rank very high, seventh in fact on a per capita basis.” Murdoch Stevens, founder of the Doing Our Bit campaign, which advocates doubling the refugee quota, said that is a common argument from politicians, and though technically that is true, “only countries that are geographically far away from crisis zones use the quota system. It’s them saying we do more than Germany, and they still say it.”
The Doing Our Bit campaign highlights that Canada and Australia have refugee quotas 25 times and 9.6 times higher than New Zealand’s when adjusted for population differences. According to Murdoch Stevens, we “ultimately need peace; that’s the way to stop these [refugee] crises” but as that has been attempted since the beginning of the civil war, we need something more immediate to ease the situation. Many of those who have fled will eventually want to return to their homeland, but are unable to due to homes being bombed, lack of adequate food for their families, employment losses, and poor access to education since the crisis began. As the New Zealand refugee quota hasn’t increased since 1987 and with our “population up 42% in that time, it’s probably time to do some more,” says Stevens.
Immigration New Zealand is currently reviewing the refugee quota, which will be sent to Cabinet by the end of February. The Doing Our Bit Campaign is prepared for the review announcement to be released as late as June or even July, some five months later than it might have been released. In that time, ten of thousands, if not more will have died.
Do New Zealanders Want To Do More?
On the whole, New Zealanders support an increase in the refugee quota, with a poll from Research New Zealand in October 2015 showing 61% of the respondents agree that New Zealand should increase their refugee quota by over 600, with just 28% saying we should take in less, and 11% admitting they simply don’t know. These results concern a permanent increase to the quota, not the 200 a year increase for three years before returning to the 1987 amount.
The Process of Obtaining a Refugee Place
On average, the international waiting time to be granted refugee status is approximately 17 years, a staggeringly long time. One of the questions most often asked when this topic rears its head is: ‘What if some of the refugees are terrorists?’ Stevens often encounters this issue, and stated, “If you come to NZ as a quota refugee, you are subject to the most interrogation. Not only does Immigration New Zealand extensively interview you, but you also submit your biometric data to the Five Eyes network.” On top of that, most people who come here through the quota system are “part of a family group… so if you’re a terrorist wanting to commit atrocities, you’re going to avoid the quota.”
Furthermore, while it seems crass to discuss the economic costs of resettlement while Syrian families drown crossing the Mediterranean or freeze while trying to reach Europe in the bitter winter, it has to be assessed. According to Michael Woodhouse, the extra 600 Syrian refugees New Zealand is allowing refugee status to is “an investment of around $24 million” and the refugee programme costs “about $60 million a year alone.”
Immigration researcher Professor Paul Spoonley contends that refugees are an economic asset to New Zealand, although this only becomes apparent in the long term. Woodhouse questions this: “Why should it be the case that we wait a whole generation, sometimes more, for them to make a meaningful contribution to New Zealand?” The predecessor to Michael Woodhouse as Minister of Immigration, Nathan Guy, when in office, “found that fewer than 38% of quota refugees were in paid employment ten years after they got here. Many of them are disconnected with their communities, they struggle with language, their children were not connecting well in schools and they were socially isolated.”
According to Woodhouse himself, “allowing them to come into New Zealand and then just leaving them to their own devices, exacerbating the social isolation that they experience is not humanitarian. The humanitarian thing to do is to support them; that’s humanitarian.”