Doing our bit for refugees in the city

Palmerston North is one of a handful of cities in New Zealand that already does its bit for refugees.

Last year, 157 people settled in the city, making it the fourth most populous resettlement region after Wellington, Hamilton and Dunedin, with Nelson only slightly behind.

If the other largest 15 centres took on as many people as these top five, New Zealand’s refugee quota would be much closer to a fair level.

A fair level is not so hard to work out – we should help as many people as countries in similar situations. But what do I mean by ‘‘similar situations’’?

New Zealand is a long way away from war zones, like Canada, Australia and Ireland, for example, and there is no simple overland path to these countries.

But in comparison to those countries, our quota is tiny. Adjusted for our small population, we take a quarter of Australia’s intake, which is even less than Canada and Ireland.

Our Government never makes these comparisons because any way you look at it, as a relatively stable country, we’re just not doing our fair share.

This Friday, I’ll speak in Palmerston North about the double-the-refugee-quota campaign I’ve been running for the past four years to get New Zealand’s quota out of a 30-year rut and back at a level that is in the middle of the international pack.

Make no mistake, the campaign to double the refugee quota will not make us a world leader at hosting refugees. Far from it.

Doubling the quota would still have us doing half as much per head of population as Australia.

The path to a fair refugee quota is also simple. In March, the Government announced that it had chosen Invercargill from five cities to begin resettling refugees at the end of the year.

By adding those not chosen – Christchurch, Tauranga, Rotorua and New Plymouth – to the cities that host just 20 to 30 families a year, we’d immediately be able to grow our quota to 1500 places.

So what does that mean for Palmerston North? Doubling the quota would not mean doubling the number of refugees coming to Manawatu.

So the point of talking to Palmerston North is not to push for locals to welcome more people.

Instead, I want to encourage people from Palmerston North to be ambassadors for being a resettlement city.

It’s a cruel psychological fact that people fear what they don’t know. We see this fear of the unknown all over the comments on social media and after articles like this.

More often than not it is those who live in an area where they will never encounter a settled refugee family that have the most fanciful idea about what refugees would mean for their community.

Those of us who have experience with refugees, or who are from a refugee background, have some responsibility to advocate for being welcoming to the wide range of people forced to become refugees.

It is this responsibility that drove me to begin this campaign.

I lived in Aleppo in the north of Syria for four months in 2009-10. I made friends and shared an apartment with people who weren’t refugees at the time, but who are now.

I didn’t know any ‘‘refugees’’, just two Jamals, a Mahmood, and Yahya. It is the sharing of a common space – a micro version of what Palmerston North does by hosting refugees – that requires we speak truthfully about what this vexed word ‘‘refugee’’ represents.

My hope would be that when people of Palmerston North encounter some of the ignorant and facile ideas about what a fair refugee quota would mean that they’re able to speak of the city’s experiences.

Refugees don’t need to be seen as monsters, nor angels – just as people who we’re lucky enough to be able to offer a second go of it.

Murdoch Stephens, founder of the Doing Our Bit campaign, speaks at the Hancock Community Centre on Friday night from 6pm on the refugee crisis, the coming election and how locals can help.