Tapu Misa: Brown faces help to foster a special Pacific identity

It seems only yesterday that the words Winston Peters, immigration and the election featured in another column of mine. But it was three years ago, in the run-up to the last election.

Not much has changed. Peters knows how to extract the most out of a winning formula. In 2002, Peters' anti-Asian immigration policy struck gold, reviving his party's fortunes and delivering 10 per cent of the party vote. This time round, having drawn blood with the revelations about the presence here of a former minister in Saddam Hussein's regime, he's sensing an even greater victory.

If, on the way to the polling booth, some people get hurt - well, them's the breaks. In 2002, new Asian immigrants wrote to me, hurt and dismayed by the anti-Asian backlash which the New Zealand First leader both reflected and legitimised. And now it's the small Iraqi community (a few of whom I know) talking about how their children are afraid to go to school, after Peters' latest unsubstantiated allegations - made, of course, under parliamentary privilege.

But no matter the human cost. Peters may lose some but I suspect he'll win even more.

He speaks to the real fears of a sizeable section of the community, who will, I am sure, vote for him no matter what anyone says.

A few months from now those Iraqi children will be speaking with a New Zilund accent, but decades from now they'll still bear the scars.

Last week I sat my Kiwi-born children down to watch a documentary about the dawn raids of the mid-1970s, which disturbed the sleep and peace of mind of many of my kin. You'd think we Pacific Islanders would be over that by now. But no.

I was a teenager at the time, acutely sensitive to media portrayals of undesirable islanders, and those raids and random street checks were seared into my consciousness.

Back in 1975, the National Party successfully campaigned to keep out Pacific Island immigrants, but this year Pacific Island workers are once again being sought by New Zealand businesses struggling to recruit new workers.

While Peters talks of flying squads to clamp down on immigration, a new Pacific Division at the Immigration Service headed by a New Zealand born Samoan, Tofilau Kerupi Tavita, has ushered in a new era.

Already there's been a culture change under Tofilau, evidenced by new Pacific-friendly immigration outposts in the islands, which have been told to be less officious and more humane towards would-be immigrants.

In a few months, the division has almost filled the annual Samoan quota of 1100, which hasn't happened since 1998, achieving, as Tofilau has said, a better expression of the relationship between Samoa and New Zealand under the Treaty of Friendship.

Which is good, of course, except that, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, getting what you want can sometimes be as much of a tragedy as not getting it.

For just as New Zealand puts out the clarion call to wandering expats to hurry home, Samoa, a country of just 182,000 people, is losing the kind of professional skills and talents that it can ill-afford.

It has to be wondered whether Samoa would have become the shining economic light of the small Pacific states that it is today if New Zealand's parliament hadn't over-reacted back in 1982 and passed the law that prevented so many Western Samoan-born residents from settling here as of right.

And as Samoa can no more hold on to those who hanker after greener pastures than New Zealand, it's as well that our Government is adopting a more Pacific approach to immigration even if it's largely prompted by our own self-interest. With the benefit of hindsight, we're doing a lot of things better. New immigrants are no longer being thrown in at the deep end and left to flounder.

Much effort is being put into ensuring smoother settlement.

And, despite the ugly memories, those of us not born here but well enough established to call this home have at long last stopped apologising for being here. We've stopped obsessing about whether we belong here.

I think the question has been settled. More importantly, I think, is the fact that our presence here has helped to foster a New Zealand identity that is undeniably, uniquely Pacific - one that belongs to all Kiwis who choose to claim it.