A Chinese migrant couple have been denied New Zealand residency, allegedly as “an enduring national security risk”, and because “they may seek to assist the PRCIS (People’s Republic of China Intelligence Service) again”, this according to the idiotic Immigration Department. With their two children they arrived and set up a business in 1916 and have apparently gone overboard to establish their credentials, but to no avail.
Their past contact with the PRCIS before migrating, was employment by a private company in China established to assist overseas employees obtain visas to enter the country. With the mass movement of people in recent years, this is a fairly conventional activity, indeed my company’s Glasgow portfolio includes an office block in which a sizeable tenancy is a private company carrying out this function on behalf of the Government to deal with aspiring migrants.
This decision is ludicrous. For a start, what possible secrets or information could one convey to China that’s harmful to our insignificant country? It’s yet another example of our embarrassing widespread belief that the whole world is in awe of us, never better illustrated than with Covid. Last week a daughter in Britain told me she’s stopped mentioning her New Zealand connection because of the mocking it now induces over our infantile approach to the virus.
This Chinese family incident brings to mind one nearly four decades back. At the time the Soviet Ambassador and his stunning Russian wife were a very popular couple in the capital. His dinner parties were always a hoot. I formed the impression that having copped insignificant New Zealand they thought they might as well make the best of it and enjoy themselves. For example, he once turned up at a party in my home in a 19th Century Tsarist era General’s uniform.
My abiding memory was meeting his newly arrived Press officer. This fellow was in a high state of excitement and told me he’d spent years trying to wangle the position. Why? Because he was a passionate fly fisherman and with justification back then, viewed Taupo as the world’s trout-fishing Mecca. A month later he called me heartbroken to see if I could help. It transpired that our then notoriously farcical Security Service had banned him visiting Taupo (brace yourself) because he would drive through Waiouru. He’d offered to fly up and back but to no avail for fear he might sneak down in a rental car and spy on our tinpot army. I’m not making this up.
I’ve spent half of the last six decades abroad. Was it not for my passion for fly-fishing (since abandoned on cruelty grounds), I would have left New Zealand half a century ago for more exciting pastures, as indeed a tenth of our population have done. Such a global existence as I’ve had kills any nationalistic sentiment and in its place one treats different people as members of a single entity, namely the human race. Basically, people have a great deal more in common than differences.
You only live once and by any measure New Zealand is a relatively boring country, thus my constant travels. Nevertheless, I’ve stuck it out for the last two Covid years as reading, writing, playing golf and tennis etc have been beneficial for my recent years health problems, but by God, enough is enough.
Along with my key senior management and their families, we’re all out of here early next year and will only return when grown-ups are in charge. These colleagues I suspect may never return, and will open branches abroad.
But back to the Chinese couple. As I’ve frequently written, the Asian migration of the past three decades has been the best thing by a country mile, ever to have happened to New Zealand.
They’re industrious and independent and I shudder at the thought of the state we’d be in had they not come, given the cost of the sizeable sector of our population who view a parasitical welfare existence at the expense of others as a career choice, and of course, needless to say, a natural human right.
New Zealand, like every country outside of Africa, is not reproducing itself.
Within five years there will be huge international competition for migrants. Our geographic isolation will mainly appeal to cautious types of the school-teacher and Public service ilk of which we already have a surplus. What we need are more Chinese, Koreans, Thais and such-like, all proven fantastic migrants, plus a never to be under-estimated bonus, namely their beautiful women.
New Zealand desperately needs a visionary government, not the least to deal with the massive financial debt legacy the hopelessly out of their depth current administration will be principally remembered for.