There's little a government does without first dipping its toe in the pool of public opinion and then watching the ripples. The bigger they are, the less chance there is of anything being done.

Night after night we see the desperation of mainly Syrian refugees on our television screens. Before the scourge of ISIS spread across Syria's border, its citizens may have been living under the Assad dictatorship but at least they were living.

Now that part of the world's facing the biggest displacement of people since the Second World War, arguably bigger. These are people who had the same aspirations in life as we have. Now their only aspiration is to stay alive, to find refuge in a country where they don't lay awake at night worrying about their survival and that of their loved ones.

Pressure is growing on the Beehive to ease the refugee quota which has seen us limited to 750 for almost 30 years.

The government's opponents are telling them to open the immigration gates in the name of humanitarianism.

Even the Nats' coalition partners are flexing their minuscule muscles. Prissy Peter Dunne's suggesting we take another 250 and the earnest Act leader David Seymour reckons the Nats are running the risk of falling on the wrong side of public opinion by not increasing the quota.

If anyone should have sympathy for the plight of refugees you'd think it'd have to be the son of one, Teflon John Key. His Jewish mum Ruth fled to the UK with her family from Nazi occupied Austria in 1939.

But Key's remaining steadfast, he's been reading the ripples and is clearly worried they could turn into waves of discontent if refugees are allowed in to upset our way of life. He says he'd have to be convinced they'd get the same level of service that we give to those who we let in under the current quota.

That convincing could follow a review of the refugee quota next year. In the meantime tens of thousands will die trying to escape the hell their country has become.

And to those who argue that by taking a few hundred wouldn't make a difference consider this from an observer of the mass migration.

If you see a house that's burning down and there are ten people inside, you don't stand on the footpath and say that we can only save two, what difference would it make? You do what you can.