Some readers may remember those ‘refugees welcome’ signs that student politicians in Germany showed up with at border crossings and train stations in 2015 when Kanzlerin Angela Merkel decided to let millions of migrants flood into the country from the other side of the Mediterranean, no questions asked. Those signs didn’t last long when it was realised that most of these people weren’t ‘refugees’ but economic migrants after an easy life on the German welfare state and were bringing with them primitive and violent attitudes.
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New Zealand has signed the UN Migrant Compact, and we now await the move at the UN to make it binding. As Angela Merkel has already pointed out, all it will take for the compact to become binding is for a vote to be taken at the UN and for two-thirds of member states to agree. Once that happens, the compact will be binding, not only on member states that signed up for it but on ALL MEMBER STATES.
Whether the compact ever becomes binding or not, the fact that we have signed it means that we are at least morally bound by it. This means that, if boatloads of illegal immigrants start turning up on our shores, we are not allowed to discriminate against them in any way. We must bring them in and give them the same rights as all New Zealand citizens.
That is what our government has signed us up to.
The people smugglers will be organising finance right now to get hold of bigger boats. I’m not even sure that people trafficking will be illegal any more, as the travelling migrants have rights in any country they choose. Open trafficking of people will become the norm.
All the rules around refugee status will change as well. There is no such thing as a refugee any more. There are simply migrants,who have decided to come and live in your country and you will not be able to do a single thing about it. They just have to find a way to get here and I’m sure there are lots of organisations that can help with that.