Refugees – who they are and why we should care

Sunday Talks / Random Musings
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Speaker:- Maria Hayward
Worship Leader:- Ted Zorn

June 20 is World Refugee Day. This is an international day of celebration of the resilience of survivors of war or other conditions that force individuals to flee their home countries. It’s an opportunity to learn about the causes of forced flight, the NZ refugee resettlement programme and the truths and myths about refugees. For us as UU’s it’s also an opportunity to expand our compassion for displaced and oppressed people everywhere.

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Maria Hayward © 15 June 2025


June 20th is World Refugee Day. It’s a day for remembering the plight of refugees around the world and for celebrating their resilience.

I would like to begin today’s talk with some definitions. A Refugee 101, if you like.

Firstly, I’ll explain the difference between: a refugee, a displaced person and an asylum seeker; and then the difference between a quota refugee and a convention refugee.

A refugee is a person who is forced to flee from their home country. There is a UN definition that must be proven via a legal process, for a person to be registered as a UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) mandated refugee. It was agreed to by NZ, and many other countries at the United Nations Convention, 1951. It says that a refugee is a person who, …

.. “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it”

As a signatory to this convention, NZ has certain obligations which I shall explain shortly.

As per the definition, refugees flee for reasons of persecution and actually, mostly, they flee for their lives. I probably don’t need to spell it out, but the key reason compassionate human beings should care about refugees, lies within the definition itself. People are fleeing for their lives, so it’s for humanitarian reasons we should care. Massey University sociology professor, Paul Spoonley, agrees that the most significant consideration with respect to refugees is the humanitarian argument and he adds that “as a wealthy, advanced country, we should be playing the role of good citizens”. I think being a ‘good’ person and a good citizen is also the underlying tenet in all the UU principles and values.

Some more definitions: A displaced person is also a person who has been forced to flee from their home, but they still remain in their home country. Due to the high number of displaced people internationally, the UN is looking at broadening the definition of a refugee. But for the time being, we still have these 2 categories.In Palestine today, I understand there are over 6 million displaced people. This is virtually the entire population. A displaced person may apply for refugee status when they leave their country. But mostly they cannot leave and simply wait and hope they will survive till the country settles down (which is a euphemism, for stops persecuting and killing its own people).

An asylum seeker is a person seeking refugee status. They come to a country and have to prove that their circumstances conform to the UN definition. If their case is proven in court, they are deemed a refugee according to the UN Convention, and are called ‘convention refugees’. As a signatory to the UN convention, NZ, alongside lots of other countries, has agreed to protect individuals who arrive on our shores seeking refugee status, and we are obliged to allow them to go through a legal process to ‘determine’ whether or not they are genuine refugees. If they are determined to be legitimate, NZ allows residency, but if not, they are sent back to the country of departure. NZ is not an easy country for asylum seekers to get into and sometimes the number of convention refugees in this country is very low – just a handful; and other times there are hundreds of applicants, but rarely do more than 300 per year become mandated. Countries who have a lot of asylum seekers crossing their borders (like the UK, Germany and Italy), tend not to have quota refugee programmes.

A quota refugee is a person, already determined to be a legitimate refugee (they are ‘mandated’) and is then selected by one of 37 quota countries internationally to be welcomed as citizens. New Zealand is one such country, although our quota is quite low (per capita) in comparison to other similar countries. More on that soon. Both quota and convention refugees are equally refugees – they have just come to a settlement country in a different way.

Now I’d like to talk about the world situation and the NZ quota programme

There are 32 million mandated refugees in the world today. And there are a further 8 million asylum seekers, of whom, some will not be legitimate refugees. There are 72 million displaced persons (still living in their home country). Palestinian displaced persons are as yet, not included from this number. This is a grand total of 118 million refugees, asylum seekers and displaced people in the world today (not billions and billions – it’s barely 10% of 1 billion – but that’s still a lot of people living in really shocking, inhumane conditions). NB: only about 0.05% of the 32 million quota refugees, will ever be settled in a new, safe country like NZ – i.e about 1.6 million – a small number in world population terms, and a tragically small percentage of the people in desperate need of a safe home and country.

New Zealand accepts 1,500 refugees per year. This comprises mostly ‘protection’ cases, but includes 2 groups: at least 75“women at risk” are included, i.e. women on their own (who are at risk because they are extremely vulnerable in camps or when fleeing),and up to 75 health cases per annum – but only those that NZ has the capacity within its health system to be able to cater for.

Quota refugees come in 7 groups per year of approximately 215 persons in each group and they all spend 5 weeks at the Māngere Refugee Resettlement Centre, Te Āhuru (warm, cosy) Mōwai (calm, safe, peaceful), before they move into their homes in 13 towns or cities across the motu. The countries Aotearoa’s refugees have come from in recent years include: Afghanistan, Burma/Myanmar, Colombia, Syria, plus the countries of unrest in Africa (The Sudan, DRC, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia) and in the past they have also come from Bhutan, Poland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iran, Iraq, Southeast Asia and El Salvador.

NZ also has some special refugee programmes such family reunification (for refugee individuals who are here on their own) and the recent programme that is enabling up 4,000 Ukrainian refugees to come to NZ with a 2-year work visa. Prior to that there was a special programme to welcome Afghan refugees who had fled the Taliban. Many countries around the world take additional refugees on special programmes during these crisis situations. E.g. Germany took 1 million additional refugees during the Syrian crisis.

As stated earlier, less than 1% of refugees are given the opportunity to permanently settle in new countries (most languish in refugee camps on borders for years or decades or even a lifetime – hoping to be able to return to their homes one day). Although New Zealand accepts a very low number of refugees compared to other countries, we do settle them well. The countries who accept themost refugees are those that neighbour conflict zones, and many of these are amongst the poorest countries in the world: Uganda, The Sudan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Iran, Turkey, Poland (Ukrainian?), Greece and Lebanon. In the developed world, Germany welcomes the highest number, followed by: France, UK, the USA (recently reduced), Spain and Italy. Australia accepts a lot more asylum seekers than NZ and this makes their total number of refugees more than double the NZ number per capita.

What is the difference between refugees and migrants?

Forced flight & lack of choice Refugees are “pushed not pulled” Kunz (1981): normally an immigrant is ‘pulled’ to another country, but refugees are not pulled by the attraction of new opportunities and a new life, they are “pushed out” of their homeland. I have left some excerpts from stories about forced flight for us to read in the discussion time. The full stories are often horrific and always terribly, terribly sad.

Almost every former refugee I have known, would rather be in their own country. They want to be ‘home’ – they didn’t choose to leave – they just want their countries to be safe. You might argue, that in that case, all our efforts should be directed towards ‘fixing’ troubled states. Well, the efforts of wealthier countries are doing so. This is the bulk of what the UN tries to do, but then there are also people outside those countries who just need to be rescued. NZ does more of this – we don’t have the huge resources and armies required to sort out conflicts – but we can re-settle a small (I think a bigger) number of people. By the way, some refugees do go ‘home’ when their countries are safe.

Trauma: this is a very obvious difference between refugees and migrants. For refugees, there is often trauma upon trauma upon trauma. But trauma also creates resilience and heightened empathy and compassion – and these are great qualities to have in a community (unless your leader’s name is Elon, of course …).

Significant loss: Refugees have lost their homes, their possessions, also, almost always: family members, and as many say: their country, their culture, and their community, because they mostly cannot return home. They have also lost more ethereal things like: safety, trust, normal life, dignity, human rights, power & choice.

Let’s talk about lack of power: there is no power in the refugee decision to leave (this is very different for migrants). A 15 year-old former refugee in Australia said poignantly:

“A refugee is a kneeling person, kneeling in front of the captain of a ship to ask for a reduction in his escape price, kneeling to pirates to ask for mercy, kneeling in front of an international organization to ask for its help, kneeling in front of the police to ask for permission to go to the market, kneeling in front of a foreign delegation to ask to be accepted in their country.”
Nooria Wazefados, age 15 (Sydney Morning Herald, June 21, 2004)

That’s another 3 reasons we should care about refugees: concern for individuals who have experienced extreme trauma, loss and power.

But, refugees do not necessarily arrive in a new country with deficits. Martine Udahemuka, a former refugee from Rwanda and now a senior policy analyst for Ōranga Tamariki, said: “Becoming a refugee is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But, losing my childhood, home, relatives, friends, and everything I had ever known has taught me resilience. And, most of all, it has left me with a strong sense of justice and service”.

How we can show we care:

So, we have some choices here: we can be welcoming and help former refugees to feel more settled, and to be included in our communities.

We also can make more empathetic and accurate language choices: I mentioned in an earlier talk that the words refugee background and former refugees are more accurate and that we could also be careful about generalisations.

I didn’t talk about ‘othering language’ previously. This is language that depersonalises a whole group by not only using gross generalisations but also through impersonal linguistic terms such as constantly referring to a group as: they; them. This establishes a sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’. We are all one type (of acceptable people) – and they are different. They are ‘others’. Often ‘othering’ involves creating fear: e.g. “billions of refugees will invade our country”, “migrants are eating our cats and dogs”. These phrases are not only inaccurate, they also imply that a whole race is committing a crime. And here’s another: ‘We have to build a wall to keep out criminals and rapists”. This type of phrase creates a ‘fear of the other’ and often leads to violence or hatred towards migrants and refugees – and indeed, any minority group. Some politicians like to use ‘othering’ language. Dr Brian Tweed, also from Massey University, calls this “political ventriloquism” – it’s a form of linguistic trickery. “The politician places himself as the common sense person and anyone who disagrees with him is an ‘outlier’, an ‘other’ (Tweed, 2025). Extreme politicians use ‘othering’ tactics to garnish votes by demonising a minority group. We all know of the devastating immoral consequences of this type of ‘othering’.

Importantly, what we can do, to minimise the impact of ‘othering’ language: is: we can create and support new memes, like: ‘Refugees are welcome here’ ‘refugees and migrants make our economy grow’. Previously there were the ‘Black is beautiful’ and the ‘Me Too’ memes. ‘Side with love’ comes to mind also.

I’d like to comment on a couple of negative generalisations and myths about refugees that are inaccurate: One is the collocation: Queue jumpers: I want to stress: there are no queues! Refugees flee any which way they can, and enter other countries wherever they end up. There are no queues. By the way, some welcoming countries are the ones who facilitate queue jumping, they ‘might cherry pick’ their refugees (the most educated etc) – they are the ones who create the queue jump. NZ also doesn’t necessarily take people who were first to register. We select on the basis of need – so the most needy come first.

Another fake use of language: An influx, or an invasion, or hordes of refugees: these statements were used during the atavistic (that means, going backwards) – Brexit campaign and photographs were used in the marketing campaign that were not of refugees, not of people leaving a country and certainly not of people queuing to get into the UK. And regarding the so-called ‘influxes”, as per the figures I quoted earlier – countries carefully control their refugee migrants, and a legal process is undertaken for every person.

Finally, don’t forget that refuges are not economic migrants: refugees are accepted under humanitarian grounds. Any potential migrant can apply to come to NZ or another country as an economic migrant – there is a process they have to follow and they may or may not be accepted according to immigration criteria of the day. A refugee, on the other hand, flees from persecution and threat to life.

I’d like to just take a little bit of time now, to debunk a few myths commonly used to support arguments against humanitarian refugee resettlement programmes.

  • Myth 1: “New Zealand already takes too many refugees – we shouldn’t be taking any more”. If we were to take the per capita equivalent of Germany – we would need to take 40,000, and of Australia, over 4,000. We take too few -compared to other ‘quota’ countries.
  • Myth 2: “We should be looking after our own people in need first”. Yes, we totally should be looking after people in need, but we can do both. The cost of bringing in refugees is actually minimal (I’ll tell you about that shortly), and refugees, like migrants, make our economy grow. This has been shown in many studies. We shouldn’t pick and choose who gets help and who doesn’t – we should help all people in need to the extent we can. (Or we could choose to give more money to the rich, or to take mor money from them – I suppose …).
  • Myth 3: “It’s so expensive to bring refugees to NZ”. The last figures I had, showed it cost NZ in total about $45 million per annum to bring refugees to NZ on the quota programme. The Treaty principles bill has so far cost us $6 million, and will be another $30 million if we need a referendum. The rugby world cup cost $66 million, the America’s yachting cup cost between $600 million and 1 billion. And the recent tax cuts that most of us hardly noticed as our incomes were low, cost us $2.8 billion; the landlord tax concessions, $2.9 billion per annum; that is, if my Maths is correct, it costs NZ less than 1% of the cost of tax cuts per year, to bring all the quota refugees to Aotearoa each year. It’s teeny in economic terms – and refugees build the economy – through creating employment and tax contributions. They should be seen as an investment, just as we see children or education costs – an investment in the economy.

I want to tell you about the Australian Hugo report. This report, whose findings have been duplicated in other places and confirmed in later Australian studies too, found that the first generation of refugees in that country (i.e. those who either came to Australia at a young age, or were born there to refugee parents) achieve higher in terms of education and employment than any other group. Migrants achieve the next highest and then Australians. Both migrants and refugees return to achieving the same as Australians by the next generation. So, this first generation of former refugees contribute significantly to a country. Also, Germany – after they accepted an additional 1 million refugees from Syria, stated their country was in surplus directly due to this ‘influx’ after less than 5 years. The economy grew as a direct result. It was a positive economic measure, not a negative one.

I want to digress slightly here to quote what economist Shamubeel Eaqub and again, professor, Paul Spoonley say about the economics of refugee settlement. Eaqub said: “The money spent (on refugees) is seen purely as a cost, and not as an investment.” He added: “if the Rugby World Cup was worth so many billions of dollars to the economy, I bet refugees are worth a lot more.” Eaqub said the international evidence was that refugees’ net economic impact could be positive, but only with good resettlement processes (and we do have those in NZ). Professor Spoonley also said migrants created a net economic gain for New Zealand, contributing more to tax coffers than they took out. These comments align with statements from other international economists. However, it’s important to remember, and I’m sure you all do, that with refugees, it’s the moral question that must take precedence. The fundamental reason for assisting refugees is that of compassion and empathy. But they do contribute to our economy – so maybe its win:win!

  • Myth 4: “Refugees might be terrorists”. As we know from the Christchurch massacre, anyone can be a terrorist. Academics say that the way to minimalize terrorist thinking, unsurprisingly is through inclusive education programmes as well as legislating against activities such as hate speech. These ensure that fear of ‘others’ due to misinformation or fake data, is curtailed. We have a UU value of pluralism – I think this is all about welcoming diversity in our communities – understanding the benefits of pluralism and now, perhaps that one of those benefits is an economic one – if that matters to us.
  • Myth 5: “Refugees come for a better life”: Actually, it’s migrants who come for a better life – and what’s wrong with that? Migrants apply for residency or citizenship and are either accepted or rejected. Refugees flee away from death and persecution. They come for life as opposed to death, but probably it never occurs to them whether it’s a better life – it is life!

I hope the information I have provided today has given you some data about the international refugee situation and also hopefully helped to allay some of your fears. I hope too, that you now know about the existence and dangers of fake data and false memes.

I would like to conclude by saying that in all my years of working with former refugees, the vast, vast majority have been desperately keen to obey the new laws and to give back to the society that has welcomed them – and we know they do. Interestingly, in our University, the majority of former refugees study courses that prepare them for the ‘helping professions’.

I hope this talk hasn’t felt like a lecture or hard work. I hope instead, it gives you more reason to care. You can’t sanitize the refugee journey – it’s not a good one – ever. But, refugees are survivors – they’re not pathetic, needy people requiring our sympathy – they’re amazing adults, teenagers and kids, who have learned through lived experience not only resilience, but also the true meaning of compassion and empathy, and the importance of ‘giving’. These, of course, are our UU values.

I haven’t told a lot of stories, we will be hearing from a former refugee in a couple of weeks – and I have some quotes from a book of refugee testimonies for you to think about in the discussion time. I leave, with the church, some copies of this book. Pleases borrow them and return for others to read.

I’d like to end with a couple of short quotes:

“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” Margaret Mead

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.” Dalai Lama

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