Kate Hawkesby: More refugees is the right thing to do

COMMENT: Taking the politics out of it (which is almost impossible to do these days) I think the refugee announcement is a great one. The annual quota increases to 1500 a year from July 2020.

Politically, it's a huge and much-needed win for Labour, at a time when they're under fire for being at the behest of NZ First.

But outside of the politics, it's about the right thing to do.

Refugees, despite all the stereotypes hastily thrown their way, are generally speaking, extremely hard-working, grateful people, who are ecstatic to get into a country such as ours, and seemingly go out of their way to make it work.

For every person who moans they're taking the job or home of a Kiwi, think about this: they work hard, they put in the effort, they do not expect hand outs or a free ride. There are jobs available to Kiwis now, but many can't be bothered to make an effort to grab any of them.

Many Kiwis wouldn't put in the grind and work as hard as some of these refugees do. Many Kiwis are growing up with a sense of entitlement, rather than any work ethic.

The people I know who deal first-hand with refugees find them on the whole to be grateful, humble hard-working people who want to make the best of the opportunities given to them.

They've often come from dire circumstances, displaced in extremely awful conditions or situations, making huge sacrifices for their families, and they're enormously grateful to be here.

I like the idea that we prepare properly for them too, we need to support them and help with their transition. Despite the moaners and the naysayers around this sort of wraparound care for refugees, this actually benefits everybody.

And who can argue against diversity? Who can argue against all they can bring to teach us, and help make our country more interesting? The skills and experience they bring, we should be welcoming this with open arms.

It saddens me how mean-spirited we can sound in judging and reacting in a knee jerk fashion to refugees.

We lump them all in one boat and pigeon hole them all as criminals or bludgers.
They're often the opposite of that.

Refugees are an easy target for vitriol, but from my experience, and from what I hear from friends who're at the coal face of this, refugees have nothing but good things to offer us as a country.

So what are we so afraid of?