Refugees with HIV to cost NZ $1m a year

Refugees with HIV to cost NZ $1m a year
Taxpayers are to fork out nearly $1 million a year for HIV drugs and treatment for 50 Zimbabwean refugees who have been granted residency. The refugees include more than a dozen who have been allowed to stay in New Zealand after they came forward during an amnesty. The Government conceded in August 2006 that it erred in allowing Zimbabweans into the country without conducting HIV tests - despite knowing the country's deadly infection rates. Immigration figures obtained by The Dominion Post show 939 Zimbabweans were granted residency as at the start of this month under a policy to help them flee the humanitarian crisis caused by Robert Mugabe's regime between 2000 and 2004. Of these, 345 had their residency approved after coming forward under the amnesty - offered when it became clear that refugees were avoiding authorities - and 17 of this group had tested HIV-positive.

And good on us, if we take in refugees from places of pain and hurt from around the World, we have a responsibility to do all in our power to help those refugees into some semblance of normality, and that includes helping those with AIDS, we’ve all been disgusted by Mugabe and what he is doing in Zimbabwe and the extra cost of medicine for these people shouldn’t diminish our thirst for human rights from compassion. I blogged last week on my anger when I see immigrants who have suffered much less than these refugees who break the law and who don’t get deported and who use up scarce resources and who use the fact they’ve fathered sick children who need their sexual abusing/machete chasing fathers to stay in the country, because the real need and real compassion should be focused on those who deserve it, not those who abuse our good grace.