KEY POINTS:
I don't know what the acceptable timeframe is for deciding whether an individual poses a security risk, but five years does seem an awfully long time.
The Government revealed this week that a review of Ahmed Zaoui's case was still a good six to eight months away and the delay means that by the time the case is heard, Zaoui's fight to stay in this country will have dragged on for nearly five years.
Granted, there are some poor souls around the world under investigation who have been held for longer - and in far worse conditions - but five years does seem an incompetently long time to decide on Zaoui's refugee status here.
And now the Minister for Immigration, David Cunliffe, has received a request from an unnamed party for Zaoui's family to join him in New Zealand because of the length of time it's taken to make a decision on his case.
I'm sure he's missing his wife and four kids, but I bet his wife is missing him more. Looking after four kids - one with special needs, apparently - would be no picnic, on your own, in a foreign country. I'm not at all surprised the family wants to be reunited. But there is no way the Government will allow Zaoui's family to join him here. It would be political suicide to do so.
Although Prime Minister Helen Clark made a few wrong calls last year, she is generally a very canny diviner of public opinion and she would be well aware that granting Zaoui's wife and children a family pass to the fun park that is New Zealand would be very unpopular.
It's not that New Zealanders are hard-hearted people - it's just that his case is not clear-cut enough to demand wholesale support and sympathy. I don't believe he poses any great risk to our national security, but that's just gut instinct.
He stood behind me at Midnight Mass at St Benedict's for a few moments before he got upgraded to a better possie (which is fair enough, he lives there - I only pop in once or twice a year to keep my options open). He looks like a very nice man, and surely if he was that much of a security risk, he wouldn't be free to live with the monks in Auckland, conducting the odd lecture, and displaying his exemplary soccer skills at parks around the city.
So I don't lie in bed at night, wondering when Zaoui's going to do us all in.
But there are other countries that have decided he's not safe enough for them, so that must be taken into account when deciding whether he be granted refugee status.
The one thing that holds me back from joining Dave Dobbyn in welcoming Zaoui home is that he's not much of a refugee. Half-starved, desperate people who have risked their lives in leaky boats to sail across oceans to a better world, people who've battled storms and pirates and unscrupulous people smugglers, make a better case for refugee status than a man who jumped on a plane, leaving his wife and children behind him, and then tore up his passport.
There are thousands of poor souls in refugee camps around the world who don't have the money or the wherewithal to buy a plane ticket, who are sitting and waiting for their number to come up.
Should their chance for a better life be taken by a man who won't wait his turn? Zaoui claims his life is at risk - and he may be right. But rape and murder are a daily occurrence at refugee camps. His risk is perceived. Theirs is very, very real.
It's dreadful for Zaoui that it's taken so long for a decision to be made in his case and whatever the Government decides to do in the end, it will be damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.
But to suggest that Zaoui's wife and family be able to join him in New Zealand is ludicrous.
If he wants to see them so very badly, maybe it would be a good idea if he bit the bullet and joined them.
