That’s a good point and I completely agree – GDP per capita is a better indicator for judging whether the economy is improving, and if the trend isn’t upwards, that’s a problem. It’s dishonest not to give the full picture.

There needs to be a distinction between refugees, immigrants who already have proper work lined up and immigrants who are jumping the channel with little idea what they’re going to do when they get there though. Assuming that GB also has a refugee support programme, official refugees are far less likely to cause a problem than immigrants in that last category.

One of the issues with the open borders is that refugees don’t apply until after they arrive, at which point the accepting country has less control. NZ and the US have “ocean privilege” and thus refugees are approved before they arrive. It’s the main reason our situations aren’t comparable.

Also, as far as I remember, statistics show that refugees have had a net positive effect in most European countries.

People indeed like to quote the statistics that immigration boosts GDP; which is true, it does. It would be surprising if it didn’t: more people, more money turnover in the economy.

However, statistics (at least for Britain) show that GDP-per-capita is not increased by immigration.

The distinction here is often ignored. For example, Channel 4 News has, for months, been running pieces supportive of immigration, and regularly quotes the statistics showing an increase in GDP as justification (with news anchors often quoting that at politicians). But I’ve never seen them discuss the much more relevant statistic: GDP per capita.

The situation in Britain and Europe is different. Imo there is room for valid room for worry and complaint there. The US, like NZ, mainly only takes UNHCR refugees, and the US is only talking about 10,000 over 2½ years, which is not a lot in comparison to the population. People who come through this route are safe, and the numbers are not high enough to cause significant social problems. This is why I see our (i.e. US and NZ) situations as comparable.

One thing I would say though is that given that they are usually young, refugees are an effective way of increasing the working population to pay for an aging population – a big problem in several European countries. Also, as far as I remember, statistics show that refugees have had a net positive effect in most European countries.

However, as I say, I’m not comparing the US with Europe because I think that’s an invalid comparison – I’m mainly criticizing the US for comparing themselves to Europe.

I think that 90th figure is a bit misrepresentative, but I’d like to see us at least maintain the increase beyond quota as the new quota. I don’t want the quality of our support to suffer because of it though, so the increase has to be managed so refugees continue to receive a good service imo.

The ideal of course would be for there to be no refugees, and US military interventions certainly don’t help. There are millions from places that can’t be blamed on Western interventions too though, and in all cases the causes are multiple.

As well as taking more refugees, we need to give greater support to the UN camps so people can be maintained in better conditions closer to home, enabling them to go back home more easily when conditions stabilize. Most refugees would prefer to stay in their home country if possible.

As a New Zealander, I’m proud to say that my country is not only improving the facilities for new refugees coming here, […] At the moment we take around 750 refugees per year …

I don’t want to be critical of New Zealand, but just to point out that it’s really easy to take the moral high ground if one is talking about only 750 people a year (or that number, scaled pro-rata per population).

Germany is expecting to have 1,000,000 refugee claims this year. Owing to knock-on consequences (accepted refugees then bringing their families), this is projected to add up to about 8,000,000 in the long term.

All the expectations are, given the dire situation of Syria, Libya, much of Africa, etc, that Germany could face another million claims next year. And then the next.

Britain, protected by the English Channel, gets fewer asylum claims, but still, last year, there was net immigration of 350,000 — and immigration has been running at hundreds of thousands for decades.

These numbers quickly add up to significant fractions of the population. For example, 65% of children born in London now have a foreign-born parent.

It is inevitable that immigration on this scale causes social issues. This is why Europe is putting up walls to keep people out. Plenty of people would like to be generous, and if 50,000 solved the problem then they’d say, sure, let’s take them. But the scale is such that I don’t see any good answer here.

An equivalent for New Zealand, scaling by population, would be taking, say, 50,000 people a year, every year for the next decade. How would New Zealanders react to that suggestion?

[NB, I’m not commenting on the US situation, which I know less about.]

That quota has remained at 750 per year for three decades, so by any measure is indeed stingy given the increasing need and that our population has increased by a third in that time. NZ now ranks about 90th in the world in per capita refugee intake. The number will be reviewed in 2016 so the public will again have a chance to speak out about what a more respectable level would be.

And as I like to point out to refugee-phobic people in the US, if they don’t want these vulnerable people knocking on their doors, tell their politicians to stop adding to the problem with US military interventions that destabilise the Middle-East. The same goes for NZ as we currently support the US with a deployment of troops in Iraq.