this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Poll finds kiwis have the most positive attitude towards refugees in the world [not The Guardian's headline] (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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"An international survey of almost 22,000 adults across 29 countries found British people had the third-most enthusiastic outlook towards refugees, just behind Spain and New Zealand."

Edit: Just found the actual report by Ipsos. We are #1, not #2. Fixed the title.

Edit 2: We're also the most likely to agree that refugees make a positive contribution to our country (70%). And here's the breakdown on the central question:

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think I like immigrants more than kiwis at this point. We are miserable bastards lately.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Luxon had a point, didn't he?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don't disagree with his statement I just think he shouldn't say that because he's a rich tosser. Only working class kiwis can shit on working class kiwis.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You wouldn't be able to tell based on our quotas, which are some of the lowest per capita in the world.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I mean, this pretty much explains it doesn't it. The higher per capita countries are more likely to want to slow down refugee intake, and the lowest ones like us a more likely to be happy to increase the number we take.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know in the article it's denied, but I thought this was assumed to be to align with Australia and has no other purpose since, like it says in the article, no refugee boat has every come here before.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's a complicated issue. I'm not at all in favour of punishing refugees and it's very unlikely a boat will make it here, but we really do want to discourage them from trying. The Coral and Tasman Seas are no joke. They would probably die.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah so rather than aligning with Australia, as they get more heavy handed on refugees we need to discourage them from seeing us as an option - not because we don't want them, but because they would die before they get here?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's assuming they've got the best interests of the refugees at heart. I'm really not sure what their motivation is. It could be that they thought the previous maximum of four days was simply impractical for dealing with a situation like that. That seems to be their official line. It could just be Labour stoking fear to get some votes. Or they could have found out the opposition was going to stoke fear and decided to get ahead of the issue.

Migrants have had a few unsuccessful attempts at coming on a boat to NZ, with one disappearing in 2019 without a trace. Until one actually makes it here, the laws are just a combination of sending a message and virtue signalling.

This kind of political posturing over "boat people" has been happening for decades, but it's usually the National Party taking the anti-refugee stance. Back in 2011, John Key was saying that it was "inevitable" that a ship of asylum seekers will reach New Zealand, while Helen Clark was saying she never worried about boats reaching NZ while she was PM - “In essence, boats which are basically trafficking asylum seekers don’t tend to be particularly seaworthy. Just the sheer logistics make it unlikely”. Clark took on 150 refugees from the Tampa in 2001 and National pushed back against that pretty hard. Can't find anything to back that up from back then, except this quote from then-Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel:

“The National Party has been all over the paddock on the Tampa issue. First they opposed New Zealand taking any of the asylum seekers because they thought that would be a popular stance. Then they supported taking some for processing, but not as many as were taken. Now Mr English seems to suggest that we should not have worked with Australia to resolve the crisis. When they finally work out some real policy, perhaps they could let us know.”

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don't pretend to know what the best course of action is. If you accept refugees with open arms, you may well find more and more boats making the trip (and more and more in distress).

But when the boats inevitably come, what do you do? It would surely be unpopular to send them back to their possible death. But accepting them may encourage more to come.

I honestly don't know the answer, but trying to navigate something like that while also trying to please your voter base (which won't even know the whole story or may make a snap judgement based on a headline) does not sound like fun to me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The reason kiwis are scoring so high is due to our burning desire to go up to foreigners and ask them “so what do you think of New Zealand?”.

Naivety comes a distant second behind our obsession with finding out how we’re doing on the ‘world stage’.

We’d be asking it before the refugees were out of the harbour as we gave them their cup of Milo.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I feel like this is going to be dependent on how refugees come.

If you live next to a war torn country, you will get flooded with refugees. The countries a bit further away will still take a lot. But if you're a log way away, have an application process and proper support for the number of refugees you take (which you can easily limit to a manageable amount), then I feel people will probably be more accepting.

Edit: Just found the actual report by Ipsos. We are #1, not #2. Fixed the title.

Are you sure? I only skimmed it but if you look at the list of countries, no matter how you rank it (they seem to be ranking by the number of people who picked the middle option, which seems a little odd to me) then Great Britain doesn't end up in 3rd place like the article claims. They also use "Great Britain" while the article used "UK".

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like this is going to be dependent on how refugees come.

I was going to say this. It's easy to be #1 when we have almost no refugees entering illegally.

Are you sure?

We're the highest for "Let stay, and allow more", and for that plus "Let stay, but not allow any more". Any way you look at it, we're number one. They say that somewhere in the text too.

No idea how UK is in #3, but it must be that report The Guardian is referring to because of the date and surveyor.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry I meant are you sure it's the right report, not are you sure we're #1. I wonder if they updated the report to fix an error after the article came out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, the report came out 2 days after The Guardian article so maybe they did change something. Or the journalist fucked up. They do that far more than they should. But Ipsos only do these surveys once a year so it must be the right one.

Another thing I noticed - we're most likely to agree that refugees make a positive contribution to our country (70%).

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