KEY POINTS:
Some 25 years ago Mum worked as a volunteer cook at the Wellington Friendship Centre. She made friends, as is her wont, with a refugee from Cambodia, a widow with five children. She'd escaped what became known as the Killing Fields. Her husband, a doctor therefore an intellectual, was shot. Her youngest baby died of starvation. The surviving children were continually drilled to never let on they could read or write, lest they met the same fate as their father.
Her brother, helped by his church, eventually got her out of this hell to New Zealand. With her children she lived in tiny, cramped conditions behind a shop in the capital. They had few friends, but a fierce determination to forget their former life and succeed in their new homeland. The mother worked day and night to feed and educate her children. I remember Mum admitting that sometimes she deliberately forgot to put baking powder in the scones so they wouldn't rise, and instead of throwing them away she'd give them to her friend to take home for her children.
Today those children are grown up with children of their own. They all graduated from universities - as doctors, accountants and other professionals. They bought their mother a fantastic home and whenever they can, they still visit Mum bearing gifts and, more importantly, love and friendship.
The point of this vignette is to try to demonstrate how badly awry New Zealand's immigration policies are, despite the minister, David Cunliffe, announcing in June it would have another go at getting it right. Cunliffe's main changes (leaving aside the skilled immigrants) will see the Government target the wealthy as suitable immigrants - under the "active investor migration" scheme.
It's based on three principles, which, when you cut through the bureaucratese and spin, amount to money, money, and more money.
In 2005 this same Government repealed the investor scheme, claiming it was a "rort" and encouraged "so-called investors" to buy property and park their families here before returning overseas, or "simply depositing short-term money in bank accounts".
The clampdown resulted in numbers of investor migrants dropping from about 1000 a year to only 18 in the year to June 2007. While National claimed the latest changes proved the Government had "really screwed up", the opposite could be said to be true. That the number of investor migrants dropped so dramatically surely proves that the previous system was indeed a rort.
So why do we assume that rich migrants are the best migrants? Do we care how they made their money? Take the once-squillionnaire Conrad Black, would he have been welcomed with open arms before his latest convictions? In the past 10 years people in the People's Republic of China have amassed large fortunes - will we investigate if their money was made in the lucrative methamphetamine market, or on China's appalling human rights record?
Sure, the woman of my story was a refugee, not an immigrant, but she was once a new New Zealander, the same as anyone who leaves their homeland to live here.
The Prime Minister is correct when she points out we are all immigrants, of one kind or another. I was starkly reminded of this just six days ago when I trained out to London's East End to find the house where my Dad was born nearly 100 years ago during a First World War air raid. Back in 1916 West Ham was one of London's poorest areas and it remains so today. Dad's family were cockneys.
An extract from a family history recalls Dad's grandmother, Rosalina Howes, as a "fighter" who reared 10 children, despite her husband being a "drunkard and wife-beater". When her sons got older they threw out great-grandad, and he "vanished without trace". These folk were financially poor, but spiritually invigorated by strong family ties and a love of songs, humour and hard work.
Dad and his parents were lured to the South Pacific with blue skies and warm sun. What a life journey, I reflected, as I gazed at the tiny upper levels of the two-storeyed, semi-detached, Victorian houses where large families were conceived, born and raised. To go from that, to owning a successful sheep and cattle farm in central Hawke's Bay. Dad had his faults, but he was a good immigrant.
Because just like Mum's Cambodian friend, he never forgot it was a privilege to live in New Zealand, not a right.
When Governments tinker with immigration policies and lose sight of that, as Britain has done over the years, everyone - including the immigrants - suffer.
