In recent years, New Zealand has accepted a huge influx of immigrants. It is often argued that there have excessively accepted immigrants, whilst others support that New Zealand needs to keep going for its population growth. This essay agrees that New Zealand shouldn’t accept too many immigrants because there are more drawbacks than benefits. Accordingly, This essay will discuss the advantages and disadvantage of immigration. Firstly, this essay will focus on the advantages from the perspectives such as economic, technical and population. Secondly, this essay will focus on the disadvantages from the perspectives such as environment, public security and public service.
The most important advantage is that cultural diversity is a crucial element in economic growth because the diverse workforce can create a competitiveness in the economy and revitalize the economy. In addition, the diverse workforce leads the expansion of employment opportunities to resolve labour shortage such as manual labour, unskilled labour, seasonal labour and skilled labour. Furthermore, the diverse workforce contributes more in taxes to fill the pension gap for the aging society. For example, “Around 97 per cent of businesses in New Zealand employ fewer than 20 people and many of these small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are run by ethnic people.
Their many connections and overseas experiences provide a huge amount of potential.” (The office of ethnic communities (2012).Another advantage is that the diverse workforce is an essential part of technical growth because the diverse workforce brings new skill sets and overlaps the skills gaps.
In addition, “Bringing together workers with different qualifications, backgrounds, and experience are all keys to effective problem-solving on the job. Similarly, diversity breeds creativity and innovation” (Kerby ; Burns, 2012). For instance, if New Zealand’s government projects the reconstruction of Christchurch city after the disastrous earthquake, they need the most effective method of construction because all buildings need to be made more earthquake resistant. Accordingly, if they can get worthy skilled labour of earthquake resistant buildings, the project would be a huge success. Another benefit is that immigrants are a crucial source in the country as “The smaller towns and rural parts of the country will have populations that are closer to the national average in terms of diversity” (Tan, L. (2016). Similarly, immigrants are an essential element to cope with the falling birthrate. For example, if some immigrant families include children moved into the country town, or some immigrants get married to local people and then create children, it can reduce the average age of the population of the town, and leads to the revitalization of the town.
The most significant disadvantage is that it needs a major improvement of the infrastructure to maintain the worthy environment for everyday life because there is a huge imbalance between the present infrastructure and the population needs. According to a huge influx of immigrants, many problems occur ubiquitously. For instance, heavy traffic is one of the serious problems and causes to create additional problems like a chain reaction such as traffic jams, a shortage of parking, air pollution. In addition, rapid population growth creates the shortage of resources such as water, energy and gas, also create a housing shortage.
Another disadvantage is that it causes the aggravation of the public security. The rapid population growth can cause an increase in the crime rate such as illegal import, also an increase in a number of illegal immigrations. Similarly, it can cause a disorder of the social order.
For example, in terms of protection of marine products, some people have no respect for seafood and have no knowledge about the fishing rules in New Zealand. Nevertheless, they capture a large amount of seafood illegally.Another drawback is that it causes the drop of the public service such as education, medical care, transport. The public service is an essential part of everyday life also it can enhance the quality of life.
However, depending on rapid population growth, if people cannot receive those worthy services, they would have unnecessary stresses. For example, people think that they don’t want to spend waste time more than necessary. Nevertheless, if they have to spend a huge amount of time in the traffic jam, or in the waiting room at the hospital, or on the waiting list of kindergarten for one’s own child, the level of their stress would reach absolutely high.Overall, I believe that the diverse workforce is a major conclusive factor of the economic growth, also it doesn’t just sustain the economy, but also boosts the economy.
