Boochani and Collins raise unsettling questions about refugees

Friday, 31 July 2020

Writer Behrouz Boochani in Christchurch a day after he was granted refugee status.

OPINION: The “blowtorch” that Judith Collins wants to shine on Behrouz Boochani’s refugee status process may not reveal an immigration system that is influenced by MPs, but an international refugee system that is overwhelmed, hard to navigate and inequitable.

Boochani, the Manus Island detainee who penned an award-winning book on his cellphone, has now been recognised as a NZ refugee following his visit as part of the Word Christchurch Festival. Given the apparent ease at which Boochani was granted NZ refugee status, Collins has made allegations of “queue-jumping” and special treatment within NZ’s refugee determination system.

International law deems anyone who is forced to flee their country for specific reasons a refugee, regardless of whether the NZ Government has formally recognised them as such. Unlike becoming a resident or a citizen that requires acknowledgement by governments, a person does not need to be accepted by a state or entity in order to be a bona fide refugee – they are simply a refugee if they meet the agreed international standards.

Based on this declarative nature of refugee law, Boochani arrived in Christchurch late last year as a refugee. His new status merely recognises an already existing situation and permits him to stay permanently.

* Asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani interview: ‘They cannot take the sky away’

* National portrait: Behrouz Boochani, writer and refugee

National Party leader Judith Collins meets members of the Christchurch Indian community. Boochani didn’t jump the queue.

* People asking for asylum in NZ get a raw deal

But that is not Collins’ main gripe. She has suggested that his official recognition has come at the expense of other refugees. Here is where a distinction that is often overlooked needs to be made between “quota” or “convention refugees” and asylum seekers.

Quota refugees are part of an international system that is administered by the United Nations. Countries agree on the numbers of refugees they annually take. In New Zealand this number has recently risen to 1000, with an expected 1500 by July 2021 – well below the per capita intake of most developed countries.

Quota refugees are welcomed to Aotearoa through our internationally recognised resettlement programme, which begins at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre and continues for a couple more years.

In addition to quota refugees, New Zealand accepts hundreds more refugees as asylum seekers or as part of family reunification schemes that are run by charities, churches and other organisations. Last year, there were 502 asylum seeker claims in New Zealand, with only 124 of these being approved.

There is no limit to the number of people who can seek asylum in New Zealand. So there is no queue, as Collins argues, that can be jumped. New Zealand will continue to take in its allocated number of quota refugees each year, regardless of how many others cross our borders to claim refuge.

Boochani hasn’t bumped anyone out of the way. He has just added one to our pool of non-quota refugees who have been officially recognised as NZ refugees.

That’s not to say that some resident Kiwi refugees aren’t a bit put out by Boochani’s navigation of the immigration system. Some have been waiting for years to be reunited with their families who languish in the world’s overpopulated refugee camps, endlessly relying on their luckier overseas relatives to send money for food, bribes and even safety for themselves and their children.

Worldwide, there are 26 million refugees awaiting repatriation and millions more internally displaced – a mere 1 per cent have been settled in new countries. After fighting with a gargantuan and sometimes inequitable international refugee system, some local refugees with fewer resources than Boochani express frustration at the ability of his supporters to swiftly advocate his case.

One who I spoke to has been working for over a decade to bring her mother to New Zealand. “It seems more about how clever you use the system,“ she said, “than how honest or genuine your case is”.

There will be questions too – from Collins and others -- about why Boochani didn’t take up the offer of asylum in the US. But his repatriation to the US, some say, would hardly guarantee his safety and security.

Which of the world’s legitimate refugees gets a chance for a new life in New Zealand forces us to make uncomfortable, even disturbing decisions. Luck and opportunity play strong roles in these unsettling sweepstakes. But Boochani’s case, at the very least, has reminded us of the many lives that we can transform with our peaceful shores, our quiet way of life and our vast resources, in spite of an overwhelming refugee crisis across the world.

Maybe coming to terms with all this lies in that story about the boy throwing stranded starfish back into the sea. When found by an old man who had walked the beach every day for years, the boy was told “there must be more than one hundred stranded starfish. Around the next corner, there must be at least one thousand more. This goes on for miles and miles and miles … you’ll never make a difference.”

The boy replied “well, I just made a difference for that one,” and continued with his work.