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Family is the best form of support refugees and migrants can have to help them adjust to life in a new land, research has found, and refugees here say "life would be perfect" if their extended families could come live with them.
The study Crossing Cultures: the experiences of refugee and migrant families in New Zealand, to be released in August by Victoria University of Wellington's Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research, found the family unit to be "a fundamental component of the adjustment process".
It recommended that New Zealand's policy should be "directed toward supporting the pre-existing strengths of immigrant and refugee families, while also seeking to address the problems in acculturation".
One of the researchers, Jaimee Stuart, said: "Our data suggest that families coming to New Zealand usually possess a supportive and grounding foundation of their home culture's beliefs, values and language ... and policy should be structured to retain this foundation while supporting acquisition of necessary New Zealand cultural beliefs, behaviours, language and practices."
New Zealand accepts a guaranteed quota of refugees via the United Nations and 750 arrive here each year.
"There is no doubt of all the multiple losses experienced by refugees, the loss of family members is the most painful," said Jenni Broom, national manager for Refugee Services.
She said New Zealand has been responsive in creating policies to address this, and immediate family members have an automatic acceptance into the quota.
"But, there is a big gap for extended family members in the refugee family support category, where demand will always be higher than capacity," Ms Broom said.
Ziad Hamid, 39, a refugee from Iraq, said: "New Zealand is like paradise, but it is hard to enjoy life in paradise when we constantly have to think about what our families are going through in hell back in our home countries."
The radiology specialist was accepted into New Zealand with his wife, also a doctor, and 3-year-old son, after he was shot on his way home last year, leaving him partly paralysed.
"I don't think Kiwis can understand what it's like to have to worry every day about whether a family member will be alive or dead, and where doing everyday things like walking home from work can be a matter of life and death," Dr Ziad said.
High school student Nosia Fogogo, 18, who witnessed the brutal killing of her parents back in Burundi, Africa, said "only family can make a place home".
She said refugees were so "used to running" and "it is not the place, but family that is the real meaning of 'home' to us".
Miss Fogogo, who has found her uncle in New Zealand and is living with him, said the image of what happened to her parents still keeps coming back to haunt her.
"I remember how the men came into my house asking for money, and hearing my father and mother plead for their lives - and then hearing gunshots," she said. "When I went back to the house, I saw my father's bloodied body on the couch and my mother, dead."
Today is World Refugee Day, and the UN is calling for New Zealanders to protect refugees in the light of a report stating the number of refugees worldwide has soared by 1.9 million to 11.4 million last year.
The number of people displaced internally by conflict or persecution also rose by 1.6 million to 26 million.
UNHCR regional representative Richard Towle said: "With the global refugee figures climbing, we need to ensure that in this region [Australia and New Zealand], the doors continue to remain open to those who have no other choice."
