NZ gets free ride from healthy migrants: Karetau case is payback

Although you wouldn’t notice from the news and political grandstanding, the trumping up of the Morein Karetau case as a sign of a ‘migrant health crisis’ is totally dishonest. Studies constantly show that immigrants are far healthier than people who were born in New Zealand; moreover, compassionate medical waivers are a tiny minority of residency cases.

But given the kneejerk instincts to raise the alarm on ‘foreigners flooding our hospitals’, it’s unsurprising that no-one has taken account of the massive savings the health system otherwise makes on the consistent inbound flow of people far healthier than New Zealand’s local-born population.

As part of the healthy migrant trend, ethnic minority diaspora populations become more unhealthy the longer they stay here. Thanks a bunch New Zealand! My wiry tofu and vegetable-guzzling qi gong-practising immigrant mother has a good shot at living to at least 88 without a hitch (fingers crossed), but unless my lifestyle becomes rigorously Chinese, I’m going to turn out as obese, diabetic, drunken, lung-cancerous and heart-attack ridden as any ‘mainstream’ Pakeha. As far as I’m concerned, humanitarian cases like Morein Karetau are a rightful immigrant health payback that New Zealand society should just accept, in exchange for ruining the health of the rest of its migrant population with good ol’ Kiwi binge drinking, smoko, and KFC.

What’s more, the Karetau case has been dishonestly sold as a waste of money on a ‘foreigner’. CEO of Waitemata Health Dwayne Crombie was repeatedly quoted on the Karetau case this week, as saying foreign freeloaders are “sneaking” into New Zealand at the expense of real New Zealanders who need treatment. Nice one Dwayne: it’s always delightful to see a well-assimilated Chinese overachiever with an English name hating on ‘foreigners’. He’s probably just bitter about being less healthy than his immigrant Chinese ancestors (suggestion: more tofu, vegetables, and qi gong Dwayne). Journalists have been incredibly cynical to continually use this ‘sneaking foreigners’ comment in their public crucifixion of Karetau, linked with temporally muddled descriptions of her as a “Pacific Island overstayer”, even though she is actually now a New Zealander – a permanent resident with a young child born here – and even though the investment in her health while she was overstaying is now something that does benefit ‘real’ New Zealanders.

Let us refer to the highly regarded FAQ section of the Mug’s Handbook on Immigration Law:

Q: When is an overstayer not an overstayer anymore?

A: When they have been granted permanent residency, and are therefore by definition New Zealanders.

And let us also refer to the widely employed Mug’s Handbook on Immigration Reporting:

Q: When does a New Zealander magically transform into an overstayer again?

A: When it looks good on the front page. It helps if they are a Pacific Islander, because ‘Pacific Island overstayer’ is a phrase that readers will immediately understand, whereas ‘British overstayer’ is rather more confusing.

Now from the Mug’s Handbook on Pasifika Reporting:

Q: When is it cool to be a Pacific Island overstayer?

A: When you want to adopt a stance of urban hip-hop down-wid’it-ness, and to feel the King Kapisi Overstayer and Dawn Raid vibe (even the National Party wants in!) without specifically acknowledging the actual dawn raids on overstayers in the 1970s and the lasting echoes of that era today.

Q: When is it not cool to be a Pacific Island overstayer?

A: When someone actually calls on New Zealand to fulfil its regional postcolonial responsibilities to people from Pacific nations by not deporting them to certain death in their countries (such as Kiribati), where there are no appropriate medical facilities due to a lack of infrastructural development.

A more rational comment about the Karetau case and others like it, was made by Auckland DHB member Barry De Geest, who pointed out that medical debts for new residents should be paid by the Immigration budget or a centralised health fund, rather than health boards. Granting residency in cases of extreme illness is ultimately a matter of humanitarian and even human rights policy, and it’s presumptuous of DHBs to pass comment on those decisions as if they are immigration experts or immigration authorities – it’s not their job to decide who stays and who goes based on their budgets. But to be fair, the funding structure for dealing with these kinds of medical debts makes DHBs think that this is their job, because the government has not created appropriate avenues to fund these specific kinds of humanitarian residency cases.

It’s about time they did, because that would save us a whole lot of media hysteria, misinformation, ugly racist scapegoating, flashbacks to the 1970s, and sarcastic opinion columns by the children of immigrants.

END