Sri Lankan born New Zealand Immigration Lawyer Ramya Sathiyanathan was shocked when an Immigration New Zealand (INZ) official told her that the listeners of Radio Tarana, New Zealand’s Top Indian Radio Station are unlikely to be New Zealanders.
The Immigration New Zealand employee, in a letter raising concerns about an applicant’s visa application stated that “New Zealand citizens/residents are unlikely to listen to an Indian Radio Station,” confirming her assumption regarding the nationality of the approximate 155,000 persons of Indian origin in New Zealand.
Radio Tarana, with more than 80,000 listeners, appeals to many New Zealanders of Indian origin, a large number of them are New Zealand citizens or Permanent Residents.
The implications are extremely serious in that it reflects an attitude within Immigration New Zealand that only white English speakers can be New Zealanders.
One of the simplest things to do in such situations is to join the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who find such officials obnoxious, and disgustingly arrogant.
Racism is always controversial. Everyone is against it, no one likes to admit to it, and yet it exists, in one form or another, almost everywhere. Therefore, it has hardly been a surprise that every discussion on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance have themselves generated plenty of controversy.
All this is open to question. Racial discrimination is still a huge problem. Lawmakers widely and rightly legislate against it. Racial discrimination appears to be on the wane in many places.
Senior and second generation New Zealanders tell us about the discrimination that their ancestors suffered in this country in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Organisations and people devoted to keeping whites up and blacks down eventually stood aside peacefully to make way for multi-racial democracy. Two generations ago, most white people probably disapproved of inter-racial marriage. Now, among the young, it is both common and uncontroversial.
Racist attitudes may still be widespread but in fewer places they determine an individual’s life chances. Several ethnic minorities suffer discrimination but are still richer than the majorities among whom they live: the Chinese in South-East Asia, the Indians in East Africa, and the Jews in many places.
We reiterate the need for restraint because people are often carried away by emotions, which have the tendency to snowball into something totally unexpected, unwanted and tragic, with long-term, interminable effect.
Overstating circumstances can only fuel the unwanted thought process.
