Chatter about internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom (currently the subject of a US bid for extradition) has raised questions about his eligibility to immigrate to these fair motu.
Apparently he was granted residency, in spite of criminal convictions, under a special category for those with $10 million to invest.
On March 13, Prime Minister John Key said, on Radio New Zealand National: "Having high net worth individuals come to the country adds value."
A smarter PM would avoid using such freighted words as "worth" and "value".
Assumedly, for Key, it's a simple financial matter.
However, questions as to what is worthy and what is valuable have exercised philosophers, sages, theologians and political theorists for millennia, with no generally agreed conclusion in sight. It's all relative.
For example, marooned and hungry on a desert island with no shops, arguably the possessor of a credit card with a billion dollar balance is less valuable than a pauper with a fish-hook, string, a newspaper, an axe and a dry box of matches.
Politically, it has to be a matter of consensus.
Assuming we want a larger population (which I - a lover of wide open spaces - don't necessarily), I can't recall any of we pre-existing Kiwis being consulted democratically about the selection criteria for immigrants, the values we would like to see them bring to our society, or indeed the kind of society we actually want.
I've met plenty of recent immigrants though and they say it's harder to pass the tests to get into New Zealand than anywhere else.
Passing stringent medicals, possessing considerable financial resources, clean criminal records and conforming to desirable employment categories are required.
From discussions with these exemplary global citizens it has become abundantly clear that under present immigration criteria, ridiculously, many of we New Zealand-born residents would be ineligible to live in our own country.
Certainly I would not qualify. Would you?
Surely it is time for a national discussion on the kinds of values we would like to see our country embody, the kind of society we want.
Because of the capitalist demand for growth, we seem to have sunk in to a default aspirational setting where it is taken for granted that we're all supposed to want more at all times. In the course of it we have become one of the most unequal societies in the OECD. I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing we could all just have enough.
If we need more people, it's about time our immigration criteria also reflected values which have nothing to do with money, such as respect for each other, for human rights, the environment, the community and ideas. Skills, resourcefulness, humour and ingenuity are always welcome too.
Mind you, from reports about Dotcom - his creative exploitation of internet opportunities, the defiant appearance of a life-sized inflatable army tank in his garden just after his arrest, and his comment that dealing with the justice system was like trying out for American Idol (I guess in both you sing when you're told to sing) - under a revised, more eccentric, imaginative and inclusive residency test, he could very well have qualified even without the money.