Some distinction should be made between illegal immigrants who come to NZ under false pretences simply 'cos they want to go to another country to get a better standard of living (often at the country's expense) and refugees who come here as they cannot live safely in their own country.
My other half arrived here as a 17 year-old with her family in 1996. Her father had been a helicopter engineer in the Iranian military for many years and after the Iranian revolution had instigated a number of protests about the level of mullah-intervention in military affairs, including being forced to make low level bombing runs against civilian targets in the Iran-Iraq war.v Later on, he also criticised the mayor of Tehran (another cleric, and now the country's president rather publically. This got him a reputation as a bit of a troublemaker and as such, he was targeted by the country's religious police.
After he was arrested (no reason given), he was taken to a rather notorious jail in northern Tehran. His family sold their apartment and used the majority of the money to bribe an official to have him released. They bought fake Italian passports and escaped the country. He still has the scars and missing fingernails from his time inside that prison.
After six months in Thailand where they waited for the people-smuggler they had paid to get them tickets, they arrived in New Zealand and claimed refugee status. None of the family spoke more than rudimentary English. they got interviewed at the airport and after a few hours were let loose pending an Immigration Department hearing. They arrived with only a small overnight bag each, and about $300 in their pocket. A kiwi porter at the airport happened to hear them speaking to each other and, as his wife was Iranian, recognised the language. He asked them if they had somewhere to stay and then offered them a room in his house for a couple of weeks until such time they could get some more permanent accomodation.
My partner, despite having finished high-school in Iran, went to school here and did Bursary. For two years, she walked around with a English-Farsi dictionary. Eleven years on, her parents own their own house, started a business, sold it, then started another one. They took English classes in order to fit in a little better, though their English is still not that great. My partner and her younger brother are absolutely fluent, though the accent can prove a little tricky sometimes. All in all, they claimed a benefit for about four weeks only. Yes, they've had education, but that's probably ben countered by the ten and a half years of paying tax.
I'm not saying all refugees are like this. A number of my partner's Iranian acquaintances are thoroughly dishonest people; scrounging money off the state and anywhere else they can get hold of it so they have to work as little as possible. Many of the refugee claims are complete fabrications; something my partner's only too aware of as she does translating and interpreting work for both the Department of Immigration and the Refugee Status Appeals Authority.
What's the point of all this? Well ... refugees and immigrants like my partner and her family - people that have immigrated for whatever reason and then grabbed that opportunity with both hands - are amongst the most vocal objectors to the sort of useless dole-scum wastrels the letter-writer was talking about. They have nothing but absolute scorn for them; mainly as their actions help perpetuate the perception that all immigrants and refugees are scroungers.
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Originally Posted by 007XX
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