Mike Hosking: New NZ visa rules for parents is discriminatory - and so it should be

COMMENT: What is it a migration consultant said? It's discriminatory and it's for the rich. Which is sort of ironic, given it's the Labour Government that dreamed this up.

But they seem conservative, if not sensible, on one hand, and yet true to type on another.

Under new migration rules you can once again bring mum and dad to New Zealand, if you earn over $100,000. The trouble with parents is that they're likely to be older and whether we want older people arriving here is debatable.

I would have thought most debatable within the NZ First caucus, which seems to have let this one slide. Maybe that was the pay off for holding up the Emissions Trading Scheme in Cabinet. Not that I am against numbers, I like migration. Migration creates growth, jobs, and income.

But as to the comments of the consultant, they are of course right, it is discriminatory. But then, so it should be. Never let it be forgotten that we are a creme de la creme destination. And I would have thought increasingly so, in this ever fractured world, where walls, borders, and isolationism are on the rise.

This country will become more and more desirable, and as a result we will be able to be more and more picky as to who we let in.

Our saving grace is, of course, the ocean. If we were connected to a land mass, like Europe, we would have been overrun by now and we'd be looking at the likes of Donald Trump and his stance on illegal immigrants with real envy.

So being picky is good. Discrimination is no bad thing because we can afford to discriminate. Money and skills are what we like and require.

But then having coughed up that policy, they are busy being their old Unicef-type selves in dropping what they call a racist policy on refugees, namely the ones from the Middle East and Africa.

That is not being picky, when they should be. What's racist about it? It was based on security, not race. The old rule was you needed family here to apply to come, now you don't.

Where do too many of the radicalised nutters come from? That particular part of the world. Do they all come from there? No. Is every person from there a danger? Of course not.

But, once again, in an increasingly disparate and dangerous world, why is it (on humanitarian grounds which will count for nothing) we are wanting to take that risk?

We don't want to take the risk of a poor-ish person's parent arriving - so why a potential jihadist?