Quality of Mercy

By Ken Russell in Articles

reflections on changes to NZ immigration laws

It was the great bard himself who extolled the quality of mercy as being among the highest of human values. The quality of mercy is not strain'd, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes . . . . .

But one looks in vain for even a skerrick of mercy, even a drop of the gentle rain of human kindness in the government's announcement that it will change the immigration laws in such a way as to "deter people smugglers" and deal with the problem of "queue- jumping" asylum seekers. New Zealand will not allow itself to become a "soft touch" for these people, says the PM.

The new rules will apply to those who arrive in groups of 11 or more, and while there were no current plans to build detention centres such as Australia, it seems that early planning envisages the Devonport Naval Base as a likely place where detainees will be processed. The changes would mean boat people who arrive illegally, but are subsequently accepted as bona fides refugees, would be treated less favourably than those accepted into New Zealand through the usual UNHCR process. In short, under the amended law, boat people

* will be detained under a group warrant, rather than individual warrants.
* if accepted as refugees, will not get residency for at least three years after their refugee status is reviewed.
* will only be able to sponsor immediate family members to NZ, but not extended family such as adult siblings or parents.

So is this move the good thinking that has been welcomed in some quarters, or rather, a mean-spirited paranoia in the face of one of the more tragic human situations of our time?

Very much the latter, I'm thinking. The nearest that any boat-load of "illegals" has ever come to reaching these shores is the northern tip of Queensland - a group of Chinese Falun Gong members fleeing a regime committed to their extermination. Although their boat was deemed seaworthy, the families reluctantly accepted advice that indefinite detention in Australia was a better choice than likely disaster and death in the turbulent waters of the Tasman. This, says Mr Key, was a "close call." Repeatedly he refers to a "mass arrival" that would threaten New Zealand's security.

The Government admits it is addressing a 'potential' threat, and nothing that so far has looked in any way likely of realisation. Yet even so, Mr Key said officials from 17 different government agencies would begin an 8-week exercise this week to practice for such a situation, a simulated mass arrival called Operation Barrier. And this at a time when the Govt is prescribing austerity for itself, and the rest of us!

Almost everything about this immigration scare-mongering raises my heckles. Deputy Director of Amnesty, Rebecca Emery, is correct. They're "using a sledgehammer approach to a non-existent problem." Such people, she says, were they to eventually succeed in reaching our shores, should not be termed as queue jumpers. Such is the urgency of every legitimate asylum seeker's situation, that talk of an orderly queue, each one patiently waiting his/her rightful turn, is totally inappropriate.

While I have no more time than the Prime Minister for people- smugglers, all the rhetoric from him and Immigration Minister Nathan Guy, raises the spectre of a nation consumed by xenophobic fears. The place for dealing with the wicked trade of people smuggling is at the point of origin. The focus for this country should be their pitiful human cargo, desperate people who will give all they have in this world to escape with their lives from tyrannous regimes. And should we need to say it - they too are of the human family, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, who only by the accident of birth were born into nations of acute oppression. They too deserve a place under the sun. Is their "crime" or "sin" to seek asylum in a country under-populated by world standards and possessed of the rich panoply of freedoms for which these people crave? And are the desperate measures to which these boat people are prepared to resort to escape their living hell such as to warrant the current paroxysm of fear and loathing for the "threat" they pose to us?

Let's be clear about this. New Zealand in recent years has consistently fallen behind in accepting its quota of 750 "legal" refugees under its UNHCR obligations. In so doing it has copped a lot of flack from humanitarian agencies detecting a growing reluctance to put money and hospitality behind the liberal-sounding rhetoric for which we like to be known in the international community. And inevitably, the latest measures, if enacted, will confirm in no uncertain manner the inward-turning of our national psyche, a psyche suspicious of strangers and selfishly protective of who we are and what we have.

I am ashamed of that. Have we forgotten the essential reality of our nation, that we were all boat people once? Indeed, there is possibly no other place on Planet Earth more recently populated by boat people of one kind or another? Virtually all our ancestors came to these islands by boat - Maori, European, Pacifica, Asian. In more recent times those boats had wings, and took hours to cover the distance that earlier took weeks, even months, by steamer, sailing ship, and canoe. But a boat people we are, whose boats were peopled by men women and children of urgent and sometimes desperate agenda.

Shakespeare's Portia does well to remind us of the essential human quality of mercy. When at our most vulnerable before the enforcers of power and authority, when we have spent all we have to grasp one opportunity of a better life and have nothing left to plead but our own desperate circumstances, our only remaining hope is that as strangers at another nation's door we will be greeted with mercy, not suspicion; with compassion, not hostility.

Mr Key - don't make our nation a fortress. Open our doors as they have been opened before. Take stock of mercy, that loveliest of virtues, which blesses him that gives and him that takes.
Ken Russell