KEY POINTS:
Rob McKay's plea in the New Year's Day Herald presented the frustrated face of the English language industry.
He termed the government policy requiring international students to pass a language test before they seek part-time work discrimination, and he presented the business case - a shortfall in foreign-currency
receipts of $300 million.
The potential to earn $300 million is not to be ignored, especially today; and there are other reasons the Government should take Mr McKay's call seriously.
It might be called the view from the chalkface - or more accurately the whiteboard.
As a teacher of international students I know they bring more than money to the community.
Teachers generally are divorced from the accounting side of the business but they are exposed to the social benefits of these industrious visitors, including:
* An inspirational work ethic. They're here to learn, they're paying to learn and they put in the hours to ensure they extract value from every dollar. They are role models for the children of the many families who board them.
* Cultural diversity. Rob McKay observed that current policies constrain it and that's true, but it's here - not only in the schools but in the community. Many of these students are accommodated in homestays, providing hundreds of New Zealand families and their circles of friends insights into, and equally important understanding of, cultures they may never have seen.
* Energy - within and outside the schools. Young, inquiring minds - and most are in their early 20s - often pose the same questions, but singular to the international student is the ability to probe from the perspective of Japan, Brazil, Korea, Chile, China, wherever. And they can prompt even mature New Zealanders to review their politics and philosophy.
* Openness. International students don't step off the plane with preconceptions and negative expectations. They understand the value of the twin experiences, cultural and linguistic.
* Inquisitiveness. They're up for all kinds of encounters from art galleries to Whakarewarewa to skydiving - and that's free promotion for the tourism industry, especially when the freefall CD does the rounds in Seoul or Santiago.
* Generosity. Within and outside the school there is little these students won't do to help anyone, from carting cartons of dictionaries before a teacher can lift a hand to babysitting their little homestay brother. This isn't a purely commercial two-way street. It's considerably wider.
Take, for example, a Japanese student in my advanced class. His health isn't the best but his heart is as big as his uncharacteristically large frame, so as well as dealing with the homework from his two classes he coaches a teenage baseball team in Mt Eden.
Jae (not his real name) is a Korean university lecturer. His ambition is to teach in English as well as his mother tongue.
A man of 47, he's widely read and where younger students write essays he invents debates among, for example, Confucius, Jesus and Lenin.
He employs his considerable skills outside the school, helping fellow students when his eight or nine hours of daily study are over. And he plays a mean game of table tennis.
There is a tendency in some parts of the community to see the term students and think "kids".
The phrase international student implies, among many professions, mechanical engineers, IT specialists, architects, computer programmers, English literature professionals, early childhood teachers, cardiac surgeons in training, entrepreneurs, journalists, film-makers - the constellation of careers is broad. They may be students in the sense that they're learning when it comes to mastering English, but few have not completed at least one degree and in some cases military service as well.
It's easy to see the logic of Rob McKay's argument, and the dollar isn't the whole story; the gains don't start and finish with revenue.
The government of any country where English is a big industry has access to that most valuable of commodities, cross-cultural pollination.
International students by the thousand are a free resource and significantly most are not looking for jobs.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves who wants the work current policy is allegedly protecting from international students; and whether the benefits of involving these students in the community outweigh that consideration.
And we might consider that few international students stay here much more than 12 or 16 weeks, which means the job that goes around comes around.
* Brian O'Flaherty teaches English as a foreign language in central Auckland.
