Editorial: Migrants always welcome

New Zealand First members must be pleasantly surprised at the success of their three-fingered election campaign. And when they notice that two of their fingered issues, crime and the treaty, were shared by National and Act, neither of whom improved their stocks to the degree NZ First did, Winston Peters' party can count their success on one finger - race. Or, to put it more gently - immigration. No other party tried to make political mileage at the expense of migrants, which is a credit to those whose position was equally as desperate as NZ First's before the campaign began. They were all struggling to poll above the 5 per cent threshold for seats in Parliament. Act, the Greens and, from nowhere, United Future, hauled themselves up to about 7 per cent. NZ First, with one finger for immigration, finished above 10 per cent.

Now the party obviously feels it is onto something and means to continue its campaign past the election. Its deputy leader, Peter Brown, has invoked the memory of the British politician Enoch Powell to warn that New Zealand would reap a "big big problem" if, like Britain, it allowed immigration to continue at its present rate of 53,000 approvals a year.

Mr Brown, an immigrant himself who still speaks with an English accent, claims not to be concerned about where migrants come from but rather about "whether they come to mix in and assimilate with us and the quantity and quality of the people".

Let's take him at his word. He is right that people who migrate here should be prepared to mix and assimilate with the society they find here. They ought to leave their racial prejudices behind because, despite what Mr Brown might believe, we are friendly, sophisticated people. Were we otherwise, the highly visible immigration of recent years might have brought a backlash by now. But it has not really - NZ First's 10 per cent of an historically low vote is probably about the size of it. As a country we are also fairly mindful of the fact that white people were not the first to populate these islands and we observe a treaty with descendants of the earlier inhabitants that all who come to live here should acknowledge.

Beyond that, we need people who have a positive attitude to the increasingly borderless world in which business and nations will have to earn their way. Those like Mr Brown's leader, who imagines we can "build a wall around New Zealand", will not do us much good.

Right now, students from Asian countries are providing a significant stimulus to the economy as the commodity trade cycle turns for the worse. English language education and closer integration with Asia can continued to provide wealth for us so long as the likes of Mr Peters and Mr Brown do not misrepresent us. Their outbursts on immigration are reported in Asian capitals and do our reputation untold harm.

As for Mr Powell, history has proved him wrong. On balance, Britain has not suffered from maintaining one of the most open societies in the world. But for the occasional outbreak of ethnic antagonism, Britain today is one of the world's most prosperous nations, a magnet to the young and mobile from the Commonwealth and for refugees from the Third World.

They all quickly turn into fans of football and Coronation Street and the Queen, as immigrants tend to do. New Zealand's best performer at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester was an Asian woman who won four medals at table tennis and how good it was to see her wrap the flag around her in celebration. Multicultural societies are much more pleasant and prosperous places than narrow-minded political opportunists can probably imagine.

Enoch Powell in 1968: A country 'heaping its own pyre'

Feature: Immigration