Counting refugees

The Immigration Minister, Michael Woodhouse, was on RadioLive

Per capita, New Zealand is ranked about 90th in the world for the number of refugees it accepts. Mr Woodhouse says this low ranking isn’t the Government’s fault — its quota puts New Zealand at “about seventh or eighth”. It’s refugees turning up unannounced that puts other countries ahead — like Jordan taking in refugees from the Syrian civil war, for example.

“I don’t want to get into a game of statistics, but we can be pretty pleased with what. We can say seventh, you can say 90th.”

When you have answers that differ that much, it’s either because someone has the numbers wrong, or (as in this case) because they are answers to different questions. When you have answers to different questions, the right statistical approach isn’t to look at the answers and decide which one you like, it’s to look at the questions and ask which is the right one.  That is, should we regard refugee numbers as basically about resettlement quotas managed through UNHCR, or as including asylum seekers?

People setting off on their own into neighbouring countries is, has always been, and probably always will be the main way they become refugees. The refugee resettlement process is a way for countries who aren’t within walking/driving/sailing distance of a humanitarian disaster to contribute and to perform some of their duty to the international community.  But the refugees who turn up unannounced, not the tidily resettled ones, are the primary and usual case. They should be included in the count unless there’s some special reason occasionally not to.

New Zealand doesn’t accept many refugees — and most countries probably wouldn’t if they could avoid it. Germany and Turkey are currently handling very high numbers because of asylum seeker fleeing the Syrian crisis, but had much lower numbers ten years ago. But German and Turkey really are accepting more refugees now. If you were in Mr Woodhouse’s ‘game of statistics’ and you were handed the ‘no, nothing has changed much’ side of that argument, you would lose.

New Zealand accepts a very low number of refugees either per capita or per unit GDP.  Some people are happy with that. Many people, probably, are happy that it’s not ten or twenty times larger, as in several European countries. But it is a very low number and people who don’t want it to change should be honest about that.

In any case, whether we count qualifying asylum-seekers or just resettled refugees, whether we look per capita or per dollar of GDP, there’s one consistent finding. We accept fewer refugees than Australia.