[As published in November/December Baybuzz magazine.]

Run this thought experiment for me. 

You’re trapped on a desert island and can choose just one person to be marooned with. Who would they be? If it’s a make-believe person, what is their age, gender, nationality, etc?

I’ve asked a few people and a reassuring number have chosen their spouse. My wife rolled her eyes when I declared my interest in Kate Beckinsale, but I’ve seen her in movies and she’s tough and resourceful.

Other answers include, “the Samoan bloke down the road because he’s amazing at catching fish”, a boatbuilder and Bear Grylls.

Absolutely no one chose a 79-year-old grandmother from Tajikistan. I don’t think this is because they’re racist, ageist or sexist. People choose companions who are a good fit in terms of culture, language, age, moral beliefs or whatever. If you have plenty in common, it’s a good foundation on which you can take on the challenges of life. 

Such an approach is discriminatory, but not in the malicious sense. Only the most deluded idealist would say, “I will not discriminate on the basis of culture, creed, vocation, disability, or age. My society embraces all.” If they did I’d send them Donald Trump along with a reality TV film crew.

Liberal delusions also extend to immigration and they envisage a multicultural utopia. I’ve been to parts of Europe and the UK where this seems not to be working so well. What all nations need from their immigrants is people that make a useful contribution, that assimilate well and, somewhere down the list, people whose culture provides some richness and culture to society. 

I’m a huge fan of immigration. All our forebears were immigrants, I married an immigrant and have employed wonderful people from all over the world. In some cases we’ve even paid for immigration lawyers to assist exceptional people on their immigration journey. 

Immigrants making a valuable contribution in many sectors. A while back I encountered a series of doctors various family members received treatment from – they were respectively Indian, Iranian, South African and Zimbabwean. When a New Zealander finally broke the trend, they were Māori. 

None of these met my ‘by pakeha, for pakeha’ cultural needs but medicine is an international practice so we made the best of it. I admit to being a little nervous about the Iranian as I’ve never been to Iran and they get some bad press. It turns out he was probably the best of a thoroughly competent bunch. There just aren’t enough of these foreign doctors or nurses.

Over the past decade we have welcomed about a million immigrants. That startling number is on the increase with 173,000 immigrants arriving in the year to September 2023. Offsetting this were the 47,000 citizens that decided they’d had enough and left.

It’s impossible not to conclude we’re making a mess of immigration, given the desperate shortage of doctors and nurses that persists. These are internationally transferrable skills and there is no excuse for the crisis we currently face. I know some aged people who haven’t seen their GP for four years. They’ve given up because it’s so hard to get an appointment.

The frustrations medical professional immigrants have experienced are threefold. The first are the impediments to gaining registration in NZ. While a conservative approach does protect the interests of patients, it also creates a ‘die while you wait for treatment’ problem.

Secondly, many immigrant nurses don’t find employment, despite the shortages. There’s a lack of honesty about this situation. They are unemployable as their English is hard to understand and employers don’t think they’d be a good cultural fit. I don’t think it’s racism as there are a raft of Indian and Filipino nurses I’ve observed. There is an unscrupulous element that resides in immigration consultancy space, that is complicit in this situation.

Thirdly, I’ve encountered several foreign doctors who have used their skills to gain residency in NZ, but have subsequently left; not finding the country or the state of medical system to their liking. 

The skills shortage pathway is one that few could oppose. We need smart young people to help grow this economy and to pay the taxes needed to fund the superannuation and healthcare for the wave of baby boomers exiting the workforce. This is a problem across the developed world as birth rates are below population replacement levels in all countries except Israel. We all want first world services but haven’t worked out how to deliver them. The business and investment pathways to immigration are mostly positive and for similar reasons.

Perhaps the most problematic immigration pathway is that which flows from education. There are currently around 69,000 foreign students in NZ, well down the from the 131,00 in pre-Covid days. A good deal of these students don’t come to NZ in pursuit of the deteriorating standards of education we offer. They pay handsomely for their education here, to provide them a pathway to immigration. Thereafter they often bring in other family members to join them. 

I don’t oppose this pathway or question the quality of the students. Provided they are gaining an education that is aligned with our skills shortages, I’d like them to stay. Regrettably, the two most common areas of undergraduate study are listed as ‘Society and Culture’ and ‘Management and Commerce’. The former doesn’t include many jobs on the skill shortages list and the latter is a commonsense pseudoscience. I have the degree to prove it. Unless you are seeking a career in accounting or finance, such courses aren’t sufficiently compelling.

Around 50% of foreign students seek subsequent work visas or residency and perhaps those with degrees in Communications, Political Science and Anthropology should be sent back home. 

All this returns me to the issues of cultural fit and integration. Immigration NZ is interested in immigrants’ ability to speak English and to be of good character. I’d go further and suggest we want immigrants that are committed to tolerance, freedom of religion and speech, democracy, equal opportunity and at least respect the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our society. There is an unwritten social contract that exists and I’d like new citizens that are happy to sign up to it. 

Of all ‘races’, I think Canadians assimilate the best. They are liberal, democratic and have our quirky sense of humour. 

There are many foreign cultural norms which I’d rather not cultivate in NZ. I have spoken to Russians who don’t seem to understand democracy and don’t much fancy it. I understand that perspective as Russia has no credible democratic history and our leaders can look weak next to Putin. I have known Chinese who engage in supplementary cash payments in business transactions, which is commonplace in many communist or formerly communist countries. I know of Muslims that think we’d have a better society with Sharia law. 

I welcome these political, cultural and religious views to NZ, but in numbers that ensure their ideas don’t take hold and we are more likely to ‘corrupt’ their children to our way of thinking. To ensure cultural integration, I’d rather 2,000 immigrants from each of 50 countries, rather than 50,000 immigrants from just two countries. I’d also like a cap on immigrant numbers so as not to create an excessive strain on housing or infrastructure.

The sensitive part of immigration is that we need to be selective about who and how many we want in this country. We need to have a public conversation about immigration and no government has yet been interested in doing so. Our shyness about these discussions is that they may unearth some racism and bigotry that lies dormant in our society, or even in us personally. 

I’m not afraid of any of that if it results in the enrichment NZ could enjoy through well-managed immigration. 

Paul Paynter is our resident iconoclast and cider maker. Weather permitting, he grows stuff at Yummyfruit.