Preparations are underway as more refugees set to make New Zealand home

September 20, 2018

It comes after the Government announced it will increase the quota by 500.

Preparations are underway to accommodate more refugees in New Zealand after the Government announced it'll increase the quota by 500 people.

This means there will be changes for how and where we welcome refugees. Which starts with six weeks at the Mangere Refugee Centre in Auckland.

Mohamad Hasan’s son was born in an Indonesian refugee camp and Hasan has been stateless since fleeing Somalia in 1990.

"It's like moving from the cage to the world, I feel like that."

Qemajl Murati from the Refugee Resettlement Centre says the centre operates like a small village.

But now it is a growing village after the Government confirmed it is raising the refugee quota to 1500.

"I almost cried because there are so many people who are waiting," Mr Hasan said.

Mr Murati said, "We will have to look at the delivery model at the moment we have six intakes we may need to change to seven intakes."

The centre currently has 196 beds across six blocks, but it’s expanding to meet the demand. New building projects will take up to 250-260 beds.

New Zealand takes on refugees based on referrals from the UN.

In the last decade we've taken on more refugees originally from Myanmar and Bhutan than anywhere else - 1070 from Bhutan and 2434 from Myanmar.

More recently New Zealand have taken refugees from conflict zones like Syria and Afghanistan.  944 from Syria and 935 from Lebanon.

New Zealand ranks 95th in the world for its intake with Australia taking more than 18,000.

Meg de Ronde from Amnesty International New Zealand says, "I do think we need to step up as far as the numbers of people that we bring in, this has been an increase that has been 30 years in the making.”

Refugees are resettled in five regions, but six more are being opened up.

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