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Immigration nation

Idealog March-April 2007, page 40. Illustrations by Ant Sang

They speak funny. They look different. They don’t behave like us. Excellent! New Zealand needs immigrants more than ever

In his memoir Angela’s Ashes, author Frank McCourt relates his Irish-eye-view of America in the 1940s, a place where “no-one has bad teeth and everyone has a lavatory”.

To the Irish, and even more so to the war-broken refugees of Europe, America’s invitation to “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” was a beacon of hope.

And the arrangement worked for America, too. Great minds like Albert Einstein instantly boosted America’s intellectual leadership of the world, while the following years would launch an entire new discipline, management, spawned by Austrian immigrant Peter Drucker.

Today, the brands that surround every knowledge worker were fathered by immigrants to America. Intel was the brainchild of Andy Grove, an escapee from communist Hungary. Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang was born in Taiwan; Google co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Russia. For most of the 20th century, America was rightly recognised as a nation where anyone could be anything.

Is the United States’ season in the sun coming to a close? And if so, can countries like New Zealand fill the gap, attracting people of outstanding potential from around the world?

A number of voices in the US believe their country is losing its welcoming touch. A USA Today editorial from April 2006 says arbitrary visa limits and clogged processing mean “opportunity is knocking at our door and we’re fumbling with the keys”. Two weeks earlier, The New York Times said US immigration policy is pandering to cheap-labour industries while short-changing the high-tech, high-wage industries on which the economy depends. The piece praises the skill-rewarding points system used by countries such as Australia, Britain and Canada. That’s also the system New Zealand uses.

“Lucire was always marketed as something that was international because I was international.”

On a smaller scale, the US has garnered a reputation among immigrants as “unfriendly, suspicious and arrogant”. A survey by the Discover America Foundation found that two-thirds of 2,000 visitors to the US ranked the country the worst in the world in terms of their treatment during the visa and immigration process.

However, America’s reputation finds an unlikely champion—a New Zealand immigration specialist. Aussie Malcolm, former immigration minister in the Muldoon National government, regularly spends time in the US and says the American dream is far from dead.

“The latest Ford Mustang oozes Americana,” he says, “yet it was designed by a Vietnamese-born guy who came to the country as a refugee, not knowing English.”

Malcolm asks, pointedly, whether an Asian refugee would find the same acceptance as a New Zealander, with vital creative input on an iconic Kiwi brand? It’s an uncomfortable question. All of us—except the tuataras—trace our roots to someplace else, whether that’s Hawaiki or Holland. Yet there’s a perceived safety in sameness that still lingers from New Zealand’s colonial days.

From the anti-foreign sentiments that caused my German ancestors to anglicise their names, to poll tax for Chinese immigrants, to Deborah Coddington’s creative use of statistics in her North & South piece to paint Asians as more inclined to criminality than the rest of us, perhaps we’re not as open to diversity as we think we are.

Now there are quietly expressed suggestions that the government might be preparing to limit immigrant numbers. Last year’s immigration reform proposals are aimed at improving screening procedures and streamlining the application process—both laudable aims—but some in the public service and immigration industry privately say that New Zealand First’s influence in the government may lead to a crackdown on immigration, even while we struggle to keep our brightest young Kiwis at home.

Immigration minister David Cunliffe says the government is not planning to reduce migrant numbers in the near future. But when asked what influence New Zealand First has on government immigration policy, Cunliffe is delightfully vague: the government cooperates with New Zealand First “on a wide range of issues”, he says, and immigration policy is developed “in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders”.

New Zealand First’s attitude towards immigration is more clearly expressed. Winston Peters outlined the party’s policy in a speech in May 2005 in (where else) Orewa. Diversity isn’t in favour: “In 2005 we struggle to know what a New Zealander really is because over the past 14 years National and Labour have flooded New Zealand with immigrants … It is now a matter of national security and it poses a very real threat to the value of our citizenship,” Peters told his Grey Power audience.

“I could research and tell the story of a Pakeha man living in rural New Zealand as well as anybody else.”

At this point, we enter an area where personal perspectives and prejudices hold sway. I can talk about the qualities that immigrants bring to New Zealand, Peters can talk about the threat to our existing society. I’ll point to stories of successful immigrants, Peters will point to former disciples of Saddam Hussein who have found refuge here.

In fact, most New Zealanders, Peters included, claim to welcome immigrants with skills. Everyone wants slackers and evildoers halted at the border. But Peters, Coddington and other immigration sceptics have driven the conversation, and it’s time for some rebuttal. We hear about the perils of immigration but not much about the benefits. Here’s how positive immigration invigorates our economy and society, makes us more marketable and more savvy, and introduces valuable new ideas and attitudes. In short, how immigrants make New Zealand more interesting, more dynamic and wealthier.

So who are these immigrants? Are we importing too many taxi drivers and not people with the skills we need, as Peters claims? Does it matter if new immigrants drive taxis if their children—the fabled second generation of immigrants who carry the hopes and ambitions of their parents—are the stars of our emerging economy? What if their kids become All Blacks?

And are we so sure the taxi drivers aren’t actually the skilled migrants we claim to want? An OECD report last year said that immigrants make up almost a quarter of New Zealand’s skilled workforce, the fifth-highest in the OECD, so we’re clearly attracting talented people. But are we giving immigrants a fair chance?

Malcolm says no. “I have the ideal of embracing diversity, but I also know it’s not the reality of New Zealand,” he says. “I wouldn’t encourage a recent graduate from Beijing University to come to New Zealand, simply because employers won’t be that interested.”

Which is a shame. Not just because diversity is an idealistic social aim, but because creative individuals from overseas can introduce new ideas and ways of doing business that create value, attract investment, and generate employment. It’s a far cry from the fears of immigrants ‘stealing our jobs’.

An often-overlooked aspect of employing immigrants is the potential for more diverse thinking. There are no hard numbers in New Zealand, but Australian government research in collaboration with the Australian Centre for International Business found that well-managed diverse teams outperformed homogenous teams in an organisation.

‘Well-managed’ is the key. The research also found that when diverse teams weren’t effectively managed, the differences drove people apart, rather than yielding new and exciting thinking.

Tait Electronics, which filled half of its 190 vacancies in 2005 from overseas, would agree with the Aussie research. Not only did Tait benefit from the number of people available offshore, it also benefited from the range of knowledge, experience and different problem-solving abilities. In a press release, Tait group HR manager Adrian Watson says immigrant staff helped the company gain a number of patents in recent years. “The key benefit is the transfer of industry knowledge and technology into this country,” he says.

“People think immigrants come over here to soak up the dole or whatever—the immigrants I grew up with were never like that.”

Tait pays a price for its success: the company invests heavily in staff relocation, recognising that in many cases a whole family is moving countries. They’ve done this for ten years, which suggests it’s working for them.

But immigrants often have an entrepreneurial bent, too, and are naturally drawn to export—a mindset crucial to New Zealand’s future.

Wellington-based fashion magazine Lucire has a diverse staff—not on purpose, but simply because publisher Jack Yan takes a global view of his business.

“Our acting editor is Caucasian, the deputy editor is Maori, the advertising manager is Samoan-English, the creative director is Chinese, one of our columnists is Nigerian-American-Kiwi, and one of our interns is Latino,” says Yan. “We all got together for drinks last week, and I realised I just don’t notice colour any more.”

Yan, who came to New Zealand from Hong Kong at the age of three, says growing up in two cultures gave him the mindset to run a global business. “Lucire was always marketed as something that was international because I was international,” he says. “I didn’t understand what it meant to run a business domestically.”

Ironically, the difficulties immigrants face in finding work can encourage an entrepreneurial bent. Dr Sapna Samant is a writer, radio documentary producer and entrepreneur who came to New Zealand from India five years ago, but struggled to find radio work in Godzone. “I could research and tell the story of a Pakeha man living in rural New Zealand as well as anybody else,” she says. “But they just want me to tell exotic Indian tales of arranged marriages.”

“OECD figures show that almost a quarter of New Zealand’s highly-skilled workforce is made up of migrants. Godzone would be a lonelier place without them.”

Samant’s problem was also an opportunity, and after attending a WINZ enterprise course—which she doesn’t recommend—she launched Holy Cow Media, a new media business. “Broadcasters have such a New Zealand-centric idea of their market,” says Samant. “But with broadband the audience is global!”

Immigrant workers and their employers also face difficulties in translation—and not just language translation, but in ways of understanding, according to Global Career Link general manager Simon Swallow. He tells the story of a large accounting firm that recently recruited heavily in the Asia region for its Melbourne office.

“[The immigrants] are highly skilled technical workers, but because their communication skills are limited, and they stay limited for a while, they stay in the same role,” says Swallow. “The company’s not prepared to move them up the ladder because they don’t understand the culture and how business is done.”

Many immigrants, particularly from the Indian subcontinent, are quick to point out that our countries share not only a language but also a shared heritage of British common law. However, as Swallow points out, it’s the nuances that make all the difference.

“The difference between a good businessperson and someone who’s not so good is the ability to read behind what’s being said,” he says. “If I did business in India, for example, I can talk and listen, but don’t understand exactly what’s going on, the etiquette. And those are things not easily learnt.”

Of course, if you want to do business in India it helps having someone on staff who does understand what’s going on there. And the cultural gap is often closed in the second generation, since first-generation Kiwis find themselves—willingly or not—exploring the culture they’ve come from, as well as the one they’ve arrived in.

Top attraction: New Zealand’s percentage of skilled immigrants among highly-skilled residents is the fifth-highest in the world. Source: OECD Science, Technology and Industry Outlook 2006. Statistics date from 2001

Screenwriter, actor and playwright Oscar Kightley, who arrived in New Zealand at the age of four, says his experience as an immigrant helped to shape his later career. “You learn to be a really good actor,” he says. “You have to put on different faces depending on what situation you’re in, and learn to be quite diplomatic and political.”

Kightley reckons immigrants are often more driven than those who are citizens by birth. “One of the things my ma and pa drummed into me was the need to make the most of being in New Zealand,” says Kightley. “A lot of people think immigrants come over here to soak up the dole or whatever—the immigrants I grew up with were never like that.”

Malcolm agrees, pointing out that there’s a difference between employing people who look like you and those who are like you. “If [employers are] saying I like people like me who are hard-working, prepared to go the extra mile, prepared to make sacrifices for the short term in order to make a long-term gain, be entrepreneurial—there’s a lot of evidence that says that’s the description of a migrant,” he says.

Malcolm praises the grit of those who survive this country’s tortuous immigration process. He says many of his clients are treated like criminals, subjected to great inconvenience and expense before being allowed to live in New Zealand.

However, former Google developer Jason Sutter found the process of moving from a job in San Francisco to Wellington an easy one, particularly when compared with other countries. “In other countries it can be hard just to get in, and once you’re there it may be years and years before you’re a resident,” he says. “Here, depending on your skilled migrant points, you can get residency without a job offer, or within three months of working at a qualified job.” 

There is, however, the issue of Brand Enzed. Swallow, who works most often with immigrants from the UK, says the image many Brits have of this country is a laid-back lifestyle—which is not likely to attract the high-performing talent we need for high- growth sectors like IT.

Jason Auvenshine, an IT architect who chose to live here over Ireland and Costa Rica, says New Zealand has the wrong brand image if we want workaholics. “The lifestyle is a lot more relaxed than the US,” he says, “and technology here is either way behind or way too expensive.”

Yan criticises New Zealand’s clean green image as unimaginative and inaccurate— many other countries have natural beauty and we have a “dismal” environmental record, he says. “We’ll be outspent by other countries doing clean green. We’re not differentiating, so we might as well find some other thing that we can market to everyone. Let that be the idea that you can be what you want to be in New Zealand, and the right people will come.”

Asa Lind-Chong, New Zealand’s only Swedish model/lawyer/actor/singer, came here with her now-husband in 1994 and says Kiwis can be the best advertisement for their country. “When I was in London, the New Zealand musicians and creative people I met were an absolute breath of fresh air,” she says. “There was a more genuine side to their character. They were down-to-earth people.”

“Kiwis can be the best advertisement for their country. When I was in London, the New Zealand musicians and creative people I met were an absolute breath of fresh air. There was a more genuine side to their character. They were down-to-earth people.”

Changes to the Immigration Act announced in December 2006 promised to “make coming here easier for the migrants New Zealand wants” while keeping undesirables out, according to Cunliffe. The changes aim to offer a more flexible system that’s easier to use, including a simplified visa system.

With an increased emphasis on security, there is also some toughening up. Which raises the question: do we risk turning away potential future generations of geniuses, simply because their parents are poor, refugees, or from a high-risk country?

And here is a question for New Zealand employers: what’s the point in bringing people here if there are few job opportunities open to them?

It’s not just an issue for immigration officials. The opportunity belongs to companies like Tait Electronics that provide extensive immigration assistance to employees and to small, entrepreneurial enterprises like Lucire that see an international perspective as a help, not a hindrance.

And maybe there’s something we can all do, in acknowledging that Kiwi culture is still very much a work in progress, and welcoming the different thinking, sounding and looking of others who want to join us.

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