On Backbenches last night Green Party candidate Golriz Ghahraman refused to be drawn on any details of the Green Party immigration policy. Their policy appears to be to talk about it in terms of values only, but who and how many people do they want coming into the country? It is the inability of the Green Party to face up to these basic tough questions that leaves one feeling a bit uneasy about them being in government.

In the last year we have experienced record population growth, and economists are warning this is placing a strain on housing and infrastructure. Yet the Government still refuses to revisit immigration levels. In July under pressure from farming and the dairy industry in particular, the National Government backed down on their proposed immigration changes. 

This morning National signaled a u-turn on their proposed changes to immigration. Even Winston seems to have backpedalled to kowtow to the farming lobby. This back down is yet more proof that the Government’s real agenda here is to keep wages down at the bottom end of the job market. Looks like the low wage economy is here to stay. 

The Opportunities Party is committing to quadrupling New Zealand’s refugee quota to 3000 per annum over the term of the next Parliament.

It is election year, so Winston Peters has resumed his long-standing anti-immigration stance. This year his case is helped by the fact that the Government has made mistakes on immigration policy. But we need to remember that immigration can be positive, if managed well. We need to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater as they have in the US and UK where anti-migrant sentiment has scared off the talented people that can make our country a better place.  

Firstly an admission - personally I don’t want 10 million people living in New Zealand which is how many the current rate of immigration will deliver in 40 years. One of the things I love about coming back here from overseas is the fact that we have so much space. But that is just my selfish opinion, and this is a democracy. I’m interested to hear what other people think and why. 

On the back of National’s tinkering and the kneejerk reaction from Labour and New Zealand First, immigration looks set to be an election issue. It certainly is important, but we need to have a conversation based on the facts, rather than hysteria and xenophobia. Let’s review a few of the facts in light of the announcements in recent days.

It’s great news the Minister of Immigration Michael Woodhouse has indicated some tightening of immigration laws. That he has acknowledged that people on the median wage or lower are perhaps not as skilled a category of immigrant as New Zealand needs, is a long overdue admission that National’s immigration policy is about as far from a skill-based strategy as one could get. So that’s progress.

The comments by Auckland University Ananish Chaudhuri that immigrants are a gain not a drain need qualification. It is certainly not universally true and would be better phrased as immigration can provide a gain, rather than implying that is always the case. 

I’ve had a lot of people asking me what The Opportunities Party’s (TOP) response is to the volley of executive orders issued by Donald Trump in his first week of office. Like many, I guess I have been surprised that he is moving so fast to “honour” the campaign promises he made, many of which seemed outrageous at the time – and of course he seems to have run into legal walls already, trying to ban residents from even returning to the US. Not bad for just one week in office.