David Hill: Lessons of history invite us to welcome the refugees

The refugee problem won't go away. Our Government has agreed to take 200 of the thousands from Afghanistan and the Middle East who have fled to Indonesia. And just like last year, two arguments are being raised by opponents.

Argument one is that despite their United Nations classification, these people could be "dubious" refugees. They may include economic advantage-seekers and/or criminal elements.

Perhaps they do. After all, my grandparents were like that.

Argument two is that their religion, lifestyle and habits may clash with those of New Zealanders.

Again, it's possible. Again, my grandparents were like that.

My maternal grandparents came to New Zealand from Scotland after World War I, simply because my Grandad Peter wanted a better deal.

He was a gamekeeper on a rich man's estate. He had to call his employer "My Lord". If the shooting season wasn't good, he would be on parish relief for months.

He saw no prospect of financial independence for himself or his children. After fighting in World War I, he wasn't prepared to put up with it.

So he, my Grandma Helen and their children sailed here, braving storms, rancid food and scarlet fever.

In New Zealand, he prospered economically in his small-farmer/fisherman way, although it took Kiwi locals and Scots newcomers a while to understand one another's languages.

He and Grandma Helen also had their problems with New Zealand customs. She couldn't believe how lax New Zealanders were about attending kirk. He didn't approve of the way women took it upon themselves to do men's work.

But they persevered, and they fitted in, and I believe their financially-motivated decision ultimately benefited all parties. It certainly benefited me.

My paternal grandfather didn't come here as an economic refugee. He came because he was a crook.

Grandad Henry was one of the last remittance men. He was born into a well-off Surrey family, got into bad company and squandered his inheritance. Some of it he apparently lost on shady deals.

His exasperated father gave him a ticket to New Zealand and a small cash settlement, and told him to go away and grow up. He did. In New Zealand he met my tiny Grandma Edith. She soon sorted him out - so thoroughly that they raised eight children.

Grandad Henry had his own cultural clashes. It took him some time to get used to the New Zealand habit of not treating him with particular deference just because he had come from an important family.

But he grew into a decent, long-winded (according to my dad) pillar of his Kiwi community.

Those are some of my responses to such arguments about dubious refugees. And I have another, equally subjective feeling.

In Roger Hall's Middle Age Spread, one character suggests that our worth as human beings is eventually judged not by the amount of shagpile carpet we own but by the shapes we have made of our and others' lives.

So although I agree that we should screen and check those 200 New Zealand-bound Afghans and Middle-Easterners, I would much prefer our first gesture to them to be a hand outstretched in welcome, not one outstretched in keep-off mode.

It's the sort of shape-making our own country will be judged by. I reckon my own dubious refugee grandparents would agree with that.

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.

Feature: Immigration