[KiwiHopeful]

New Zealand's image trashed by migrants | TRAVEL | NEWS | tvnz.co.nz

New Zealand is marketed overseas as a country offering an idyllic lifestyle - an ideal place to bring up a family.

Few would argue that a key to our future economic growth lies with importing skilled workers from overseas, and the New Zealand immigration service works hard to attract such people.

But now a group of immigrants is challenging that image.

They say they were lured here with false promises, and describe New Zealand as bigoted, intolerant and uncivilised.

Christchurch is internationally-known as the Garden City and it is a popular choice for migrants.

To help people through the process, Mike and Tammy Bell founded Move2NZ.

"A small difficulty in a faraway place can become huge if you got no support network of friends or family, so we try and provide that support network," says Mike Bell.

They also make sure there are regular meetings with the new arrivals.

Many migrants who come to New Zealand do agree with the government about New Zealand being a great place for migrants.

"We pretty much had an idea of what things would be like and things are like we expected them to be," says a female migrant.

"The best choice we ever made in our lives really," says one English bloke.

But other migrants like American Agness Kaku are far from positive and she has set up a rival website pointing out the negatives.

"People are very hurt, they're very bitter, they've lost a lot of money - some people have experienced problems with their children and relationship and they need a place to vent," says Kaku, who started the website Expat Exposed: Behind the Hype in New Zealand.

And vent they do, the website condemning their new country.

Among some of the things said on the website, New Zealand is accused of having a lack of tolerance for others, a lack of civility in every area of life, of being a bigoted place, insular, intolerant, racist, and finally riddled with social, economic and environmental problems.

"It just makes you very angry and I think it'll make New Zealanders very angry. It's rude," says Bell.

Agness Kaku says she does feel bad if Kiwis are offended by the website, but says if they are really offended they probably should not read it.

But potential migrants will read it and they are important to New Zealand, according to the Department of Labour, worth in fact $3.3 billion to the economy as of last year.

And the government works hard to make New Zealand an attractive proposition, but the website accuses the government of false advertising - wooing migrants with an aggressive immigration campaign that successfully created an image of New Zealand as a progressive nation.

But many say 'the image is false, the advertisement campaign a blatant propaganda, and what it does to many people a crying shame', which are harsh words for a potential migrant to read.

So if migrants are unhappy why can they not just leave New Zealand and go back home?

"I think it's very difficult to leave when you've spent $20,000 and I mean US dollars, shipping all your worldly belongings all the way here, when you've probably put two or three years worth of savings into this and you can't find a job so nothing's coming in," says Kaku.

"It's like a guest coming into your home and complaining about the cup of tea you just gave them or breaking up the place," says Bell.

The Department of Labour says 90% of migrants surveyed are satisfied and would recommend New Zealand as a place to live.

Mike Bell's advice is basically that all potential migrants do their homework, so when you get to New Zealand, you actually want to stay in the country.

If you click over to the site, you'll see that there's actually more to the story than TV1 presented. There's a history between the owners of the two websites the story mentions.

I had a big problem with this quote though: "It's like a guest coming into your home and complaining about the cup of tea you just gave them or breaking up the place," says Bell.

As we migrants know, that cup of tea costs us quite a bit, and to quote Rory Breaker from one of my favorite movies: "If the milk turns out to be sour, I ain't the kinda pussy to drink it."