Tim Bale: When immigrants bring prejudice in as baggage

By TIM BALE*

The debatesurrounding immigration presents me with a conflict of interest. As a teacher and researcher of politics I generally like to preserve at least an aura of independence and objectivity. But I am an immigrant, too.

Of course, I'm not, I suspect, the sort of immigrant that people seem to be worrying about so much lately. Although I wasn't born and bred here, I suspect I'm unlikely to be a target of the sort of stereotyping, suspicion and scaremongering that seems to characterise one side of the political debate on the issue.

I speak the language - true, I draw the line at "choice" and "awesome", but I prefer, say, "rort" and "shonky" to their English equivalents. I have a job - not one it would have been easy to recruit a New Zealander to do - I pay income tax, ACC, GST and plenty of interest to the bank, too.

Anything left at the end of the month tends, of course, to go on my children, who seem to be growing more Kiwi with each passing year. And if helping to coach junior soccer (although I still call it football) counts for anything, I guess I contribute positively to society.

I'm not a health risk. I'm not a bludger. I haven't stolen anyone's job or property. And - unless you count chicken pox, free doctors' visits for the under-6s, and the odd extra cookie from the cookie jar - I haven't brought in any family members likely to infect, scrounge or steal from anyone either.

But nor, of course, have most immigrants. What separates me from them is that I am Pakeha/European/Caucasian or - let's call a spade a spade - white. Which means I fit in without really trying.

Yet under the skin, my background, my culture, my way of seeing the world is probably pretty different from that of most Kiwis. The empty majesty of New Zealand's landscape, its favourite television shows and sports codes leave me lukewarm, if not completely cold. But nobody would pick me out of a crowd, bale me up and accuse me of not "integrating".

If I were Asian or black, though, it would be a different story - even if, before coming here, I'd been born and brought up in England just the same.

Ironically, however, that "sceptred isle", that "precious stone set in the silver sea" which many Kiwis used to call Home might, I reckon, be the source of much of our present discontent. Many who came out here from Britain - especially from the late 1950s onwards - packed their racism along with their shirts, shoes and socks.

I'll always remember an English guy who came to sell me life insurance when I first got to Wellington a few years ago. "Whyd'ya move out here?" I politely asked, expecting the normal blah about opportunity, lifestyle, weather. But no. He was quite clear about it: "It was the blacks. They were moving in. Taking over. Just had enough of it. Had to get away."

Most of those he left behind in England, of course, gradually got used to it - or at least their children and their children's children did. Out here, we hear the headlines about race riots in no-hope northern mill towns or stabbings in housing estates in south London, and wonder whether Enoch Powell - far from being bitter, twisted and mad as a snake - was right to foresee the trouble letting in all those "grinning piccaninnies" would cause.

But the reality of 21st-century England - for all the bloody foaming of New Zealand First Pom Peter Brown - is rather more prosaic and, taken as a whole, pretty positive judging not just on anecdote but also on statistics showing, for instance, the surprising level of intermarriage between white and Afro-Caribbean Brits.

Of course, asylum-seekers from the Middle East and anyone even remotely resembling what English tabloids like to label "gypsies" have it much harder. But that - whether liberals like me like it or not - is the way of the world.

In terms of origin, immigrants, especially those fleeing ongoing persecution or abject poverty, tend to come in waves and be accepted only over time. Sometimes it's a very long time, and the rate of acceptance probably varies with the extent to which they look or sound different, as well as the visibility and distinction of their religious practice.

Afghanis, Iraqis, Somalis and even Chinese do seem to be making the natives restless right now as they crash or slip ashore. But by the time their children's children grow up they may be well on the way to becoming part of the scene - especially if today's generation, as virtually all of them do, keep their heads down (as well as held high), work hard and make the most of it.

By then, most of us hypocritical enough to rely on their work and taxes for our healthcare and superannuation, while at the same time wishing they'd never come, will be long gone.

Would it be too much to hope that the rest of us who are still around will have junked the atavistic attitudes of an England that, in truth, no longer exists outside the imaginations of those who once called it Home?

* Dr Tim Bale is a senior lecturer in political science at Victoria University.