In regards to housing pricing, the problem here isn't immigration. It's the retarded laws which allow foreigners to buy property and own land without ever having visited the country let alone living there to begin with.
I'm all for property to limited to permanent residents and citizens, and a cap on the number of properties purchased to prevent buying up many properties.
For what it's worth I left New Zealand 11 years ago. My family still lives there, I go back to visit every now and then, but I have no desire to ever move back. Auckland to me is a disgusting place.
I live in Singapore now.
I'm just going quote the original article here: "Of those who do choose to move to New Zealand permanently, analysis of the New Zealand General Social Survey show immigrants integrate well. They are less likely to claim a benefit, more likely to be employed, and their children have better education outcomes than native born New Zealanders."
> I live in Singapore now.
This is rich. Singapore's official languages are Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English. The official national language is Malay. Let me take a wild guess ... as an immigrant to Singapore, you've been studiously learning Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and you absolutely do not segregate into a clique of white anglophones in your social life. Good for you, model immigrant that you are. /s
Your ignorance of Singapore is showing here. English is by far the most widely spoken language of that country. it's the language of the education system, of the government, road signs, etc. It's the most widely spoken language at home, and the lingua franca of the country. You might as well berate immigrants to New Zealand for not learning Maori or NZSL.
> "Of those who do choose to move to New Zealand permanently, analysis of the New Zealand General Social Survey show immigrants integrate well. They are less likely to claim a benefit, more likely to be employed, and their children have better education outcomes than native born New Zealanders."
None of those show integration in a way I recognize as valuable culturally. They would be equally true if we were measuring a segregated expat enclave in a developing nation, but that's simply a factor of leveraging existing power structures.
The native Maoris were pressured into learning the immigrant's English language 100+ years ago. Perhaps you would be happier if that never happened?
It's ironic that you're in Singapore, an openly multi-lingual country. Which groups are using the "wrong" language there?
Why would locals have to learn the migrants' languages, unless they wanted to deal with them or there was money in it?
When people move to a country, they can either assimilate into the country or try to take over the country.
Since that's how most of the new world was settled, if you live here and want things to stay sort of the way they are, you want immigrants to assimilate and learn your language.
If they don't want to learn your language, immigrants should go places where the language they speak is used.
Good point. In my 2 years in NZ, no one invited me to a BBQ, because I am eastern European. I mostly hang out with asian colleagues.
At work though it's kind of cool to have such a multicultural teams (unless you are manager - those positions are still mostly kiwi (I guess more of an age thing, than nepotism)). I guess it's what USA was a century ago.
Perhaps if you reflect on those contradictions, you may gain a more nuanced view.
So I'm hardly a contradiction.
Often, when the next generation have attended school amongst locals, they maintain some of their customs but assimilate further. My maternal grandparents came to Australia by boat. They spoke heavily-accented English at best, after 40 years here. My mother could speak fluently in their native tongue, but speaks predominantly in English, as do all of her children. You wouldn't pick any of us as anything but locals.
It strikes me as odd that you'd consider Auckland to be "disgusting" due to pockets of Indian and Chinese, yet move to Singapore and enjoy the melting pot of cultures there. Some of these things take decades to develop.
Look at the waves arriving in Australia - Europeans, then Asians, Africans, Middle East, etc. With time, each group gradually folds into the mix. The old lady irked by a woman in a burqa would hardly notice a second-generation European speaking without an accent. Yet at every stage, there has been pushback - Asian Invasion! and the like.
...ring very, very, very hollow given the history of how English-speaking peoples arrived in and gained control of the territory. If it was right for those English-speaking settlers to move in as they did, I don't see any grounds for you to condemn Chinese-speaking settlers, or settlers who speak any other language in preference to English.
As another New Zealander, I could say the same but replacing "Indian and Chinese" with "Maori and Samoan". I still respect that their right to live there is no less than mine.
I don't know where people get this meme of "do the job native people don't want to do". If a chain store that sells asian food (say, St. Pierres Sushi) only seems to have Asians (a minority) working for them, what's the more likely scenario? That there are no non-Asians willing to serve food for minimum wage, or that the people hiring are showing overwhelming discrimination and choosing people who look like them?
Illegally underpaid work in the immigrant community is huge in NZ. I don't think I've ever heard of an Asian restaurant or supermarket that actually paid minimum wage. An Asian friend of mine actually once tried to report an employee for hiring people illegally and not paying minimum wage. They told her that they needed the employers passport number. Without that, they'd do nothing. What was my friend supposed to do, steal it!? Hiring people illegally is simply not enforced.
Discrimination against non-Asians is prevalent too - it's very normal to see "prefer Asian" written in English on advertisements for flatmates, no one blinks an eye anymore. I distinctly recall trying to find a room, talking to a friendly guy who spoke fluent English with an NZ accent, and then having him ask me if I was Asian or not. Afterwards I got a gutless text with an excuse to save face.
I'll never forget the two days I attended Polyfest - a big 'multicultural' (ie, anything not European) event where school kids gave performances. I remember struggling to find a group of school kids walking around where the members had different skin colours. It was the exception rather than the rule. I was later informed by security guards that "the Samoans" had gotten into a fight with "the Indians". Wonderful.
The fact of the matter is where large enough groups of immigrants congregate there will be zero pressure for them to integrate. They will interact with their own, hire their own (ignoring local minimum wage laws), speak their own languages and live in their own bubbles. If that's what multiculturalism is - different groups of people with very little contact with each other sharing the same land - then count me (and my family) out of it.
PS: Also ignoring the practical matter that NZs population growth is developing-world high, primary fueled by high immigration. You might argue it's still a sparsely populated country, but the fact remains that once your skilled labour force is high-income, infrastructure simply cannot keep up with demand because it's too expensive. Not to mention the effect it has on house prices.
Why shouldn't free people in a free country be able to live that way if they want to (aside from ignoring minimum wage laws)?
After all, the whites in New Zealand have been living among themselves, interacting with their own, and speaking their own language since they got there. Did the Maori ever demand that the whites speak their language and live among them according to their customs?
Have you talked to many Chinese people about how they view Maori, btw?
Why should free people in a free country allow people to immigrate to their own ghetto's?
