Gordon Campbell: On The Political Panic Over Immigration

In the wake of WW2, immigration policy was driven by a mixture of compassion for the refugees of war, and by a less admirable desire to replenish our ranks (preferably) with the racial stock of the old Empire. Ever since the neo-liberal reforms of the 1980s though, immigration has been treated as a market transaction in human capital. Its worth has been and judged almost entirely on the basis of the economic benefits that immigration offers to New Zealand.