KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's refugee intake is shifting from Africa towards Asia, but the Government denies that this is a deliberate policy to ease integration into Kiwi society.
The intake from sub-Saharan and East Africa, which made up just over half of the total refugees accepted under the United Nations quota between 1998 and 2002, has been cut to just over a quarter in the past five years and a sixth in the year to next June.
In the same period, the intake from East and South Asia (mainly Myanmar) has increased from a tenth to a third.
The Middle East (mainly Afghanistan and Iraq) accounts for most of the rest, rising from 35 per cent in the first half of the past decade to 55 per cent in the second half, when millions fled fighting.
The region will remain important in the coming year with 29 per cent of the total.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) South Pacific representative, Rick Towle, expressed concern in Auckland this week about the apparent shift towards taking more refugees from Asian countries, who are seen by some as integrating into Kiwi society more easily than Africans.
"One of the trends, not only in New Zealand, is what we call 'integration creep', where states are getting more selective about who they choose under the resettlement programmes to say whether these people are likely to make good citizens and fit into the way of life of New Zealand, or Australia or North America," he said.
"The selection process has to be non-discriminatory."
Mr Towle has publicly criticised an explicit shift in the Australian refugee quota away from African countries.
Commenting on the murder of a Sudanese refugee in Melbourne last month, Australian Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said he had been "concerned that some groups don't seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life", and said it made sense "to slow down the rate of intake from countries such as Sudan".
Africa's share of the Australian quota of 13,000 refugees a year has been cut from 70 per cent two years ago to 50 per cent last year and 30 per cent this year.
Intakes from Asia and the Middle East have been lifted to 35 per cent each.
But the director of the refugee division of New Zealand's Labour Department, Kevin Third, said its policy "remains open to accepting refugees from a range of areas prioritised by the UNHCR".
The quota to next June includes three new groups which are UNHCR priorities but have no existing communities in New Zealand - Rohingya Muslims from western Myanmar who have fled to Bangladesh; Bhutanese who have fled to Nepal; and Colombians who have fled to Ecuador.
