An analysis after seven years of living in New Zealand

[NW Backpacker]

The USA does much the same thing for citizenship - I have known a number of people who took years to get their citizenship.

We also have a different situation here in general.

1) we have huge land borders

2) we have a LOT more people coming and going via the 'normal' channels of ingress and egress. most of the people who are here illegally are illegal because they overstayed their visa. most of the drugs/etc. do not come in across land borders by illegals walking across borders outside the normal border entry points - most of it comes in via the official entry points via trucks and planes. also, a lot comes in via boats along our coasts.

3) we have a huge ag job market that requires immigrant labor - most citizens will not do these jobs. a lot of crops went unharvested rotting in the fields and orchards because the crack down on immigration both cut down on the people coming here to do that work, and people leaving to go back to mexico.

#2 & #3 are issues I have had personal experience with.

I was raised on a farm and we hired anybody who would work in our fields. local citizens were mostly worthless - we often had to tell them to not come back. the immigrant labor worked hard because this was how they supported their families. when i became a young adult i worked some of these jobs myself and 99% of the people I worked with were hispanic, most likely illegals.

It should take years to get citizenship in the US. It takes 18 years (12 years of education) for those born here to get the right to vote - should be no less for those who move here.
All of our borders including land borders should be strictly controlled - including the ports.
If US citizens will not pick ag products I am fine doing without it or obtaining it from other countries. Are immigrants good workers? Many are, but most bring their socialist ideas with them - they lack the knowledge to understand that it can't work.
Our open border policies are not only destroying the USA, by importing socialism, etc; they are also destroying the nations the immigrants come from:
Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs - NumbersUSA.com - YouTube

Back to the OP and NZ. After the USA goes full socialist, as we seem to be headed, how long will it take for places like NZ, South Korea, Japan, etc to be taken over by the bad nations of the world? Not long is my guess.

 

[The Heretic]

I don't think immigrants from central America are coming here with socialist ideas. I ahve never met or worked with one immigrant from Mexico that had "socialist ideas". I think maybe there are hispanics born here that have those ideas - I think they got them here, not Mexico. I know a lot of US born citizens who have "socialist ideas".

From Europe or Canada, maybe - I worked with one guy who came here from Poland that was complaining that the US was not more like Poland.

Another guy was from Russia and he was very happy to be here - took him 7 years to get his citizenship. I work with a lot of Indians, almost all of whom are here on work visas. One just got his citizenship after being here for well over a decade.

Another guy I worked with married a woman from Ecuador and when she went back to Ecuador to visit her mother, she couldn't get back into the US even though she was married to a US citizen born here. It took him years to get here back into the USA.

Another guy I worked with was Asian and his work visa was expiring so he was moving his stuff from Seattle to Vancouver BC. He couldn't get back across the border to get the rest of his stuff.

 

[Herb g]

My biggest...so far.

Main export.. sheep.

Lol

Long interesting story about NZ, history, and now. I heard they make more money from hunting and farming Red Deer than sheep. Within the last 10 years the Gov. was still poisoning deer. They have nine introduced species...read up on it. No season, no limit on deer, 24 hrs a day. To much to explain here. Best short explanation : it's like being here in OR (same latitude), 60 years ago. Socialist gov.? No worry's mite... they all hunt and carry guns (except Auckland, which is like Portland). Every hunter should visit there, at least once in your life.

 

[beavernation]

uuummmm did anybody mention the World Class flyfishing opportunities in NZ??......Suppressors on racks like BiMart for $75??.....No closed hunting seasons on several species???.....Search Night Wallaby thinning.....yea count this one on my list to visit someday!

 

[Goosebrown]

Illegal 'immigrants' into NZ? Where from? Have you noticed where it's located?

Wife is from NZ and there are loads of visa overstayers but no one coming in illegally. Part of the advantage of being on the backside of beyond.

 

[Herb g]

uuummmm did anybody mention the World Class flyfishing opportunities in NZ??......Suppressors on racks like BiMart for $75??.....No closed hunting seasons on several species???.....Search Night Wallaby thinning.....yea count this one on my list to visit someday!

Yes, fly fishing, but being a commercial fisherman, I asked about the most productive way...so he let slip..." well if you really want to catch the BIG ones, take a shingle an make a sail for it, catch a mouse and put the hook thru the skin of his back, set him on the shingle and push him out into the lake, then jerk him off at a likely spot."

 

[awshoot]

... They hunt feral cattle there. I am given to understand that the hunting there is good.

One of my favorite sources for info on bullets comes from a guy in NZ who obviously hunts a lot: https://www.ballisticstudies.com/Knowledgebase.html?selected=wound research

 

[PNWguy]

My dad has hunted and fished NZ; back in the 80's. He loved it. Worked construction with a kid from NZ that moved here with his parents and sister a few years prior.

He had no accent but his gorgeous sister still had hers. He said she maintained it because it drove the guys crazy. It sure did!

 

[bbbass]

He had no accent but his gorgeous sister still had hers. He said she maintained it because it drove the guys crazy. It sure did!

Gals with accents send me!!!

 

[Geardo]

The USA does much the same thing for citizenship - I have known a number of people who took years to get their citizenship.

We also have a different situation here in general.

1) we have huge land borders

2) we have a LOT more people coming and going via the 'normal' channels of ingress and egress. most of the people who are here illegally are illegal because they overstayed their visa. most of the drugs/etc. do not come in across land borders by illegals walking across borders outside the normal border entry points - most of it comes in via the official entry points via trucks and planes. also, a lot comes in via boats along our coasts.

3) we have a huge ag job market that requires immigrant labor - most citizens will not do these jobs. a lot of crops went unharvested rotting in the fields and orchards because the crack down on immigration both cut down on the people coming here to do that work, and people leaving to go back to mexico.

#2 & #3 are issues I have had personal experience with.

I was raised on a farm and we hired anybody who would work in our fields. local citizens were mostly worthless - we often had to tell them to not come back. the immigrant labor worked hard because this was how they supported their families. when i became a young adult i worked some of these jobs myself and 99% of the people I worked with were hispanic, most likely illegals.

About the harvesting. I am positive people said the same stuff about picking cotton. We figured out how to do that mechanically. I am positive the vast majority of farming could be mechanized if the cheap source of labor is cut off. Would also reduce the e-coli issues.

Non-issue IMO. Would promt a lot of good growth in programming, engineering, and manufacturing.

 

[Geardo]

My biggest...so far.View attachment 547227
Long interesting story about NZ, history, and now. I heard they make more money from hunting and farming Red Deer than sheep. Within the last 10 years the Gov. was still poisoning deer. They have nine introduced species...read up on it. No season, no limit on deer, 24 hrs a day. To much to explain here. Best short explanation : it's like being here in OR (same latitude), 60 years ago. Socialist gov.? No worry's mite... they all hunt and carry guns (except Auckland, which is like Portland). Every hunter should visit there, at least once in your life.

How do you know if you shot a poisoned deer? Seems risky. ..

 

[The Heretic]

About the harvesting. I am positive people said the same stuff about picking cotton. We figured out how to do that mechanically. I am positive the vast majority of farming could be mechanized if the cheap source of labor is cut off. Would also reduce the e-coli issues.

Non-issue IMO. Would promt a lot of good growth in programming, engineering, and manufacturing.

As a part time farmer myself raised on a farm, surrounded by farms, yes, mechanization is advancing because of cost of labor and competition.

But there are problems with mechanization:

1) There are just some crops that are really hard to mechanically harvest - e.g., strawberries. I don't think anyone will ever come up with a machine, short of a really good dexterous robot, that can pick current strawberries.

2) Because of #1, new plants/etc., are being engineered to make crops more easily harvested by machines. This often results in inferior taste and texture. Mechanized harvest also often results in picking crops before they are ripe and then artificially ripening them. Again, inferior taste and texture - not to mention nutritional value.

3) Mechanical harvest often causes plant damage - I have seen raspberry fields mechanically harvest. It really thrashes the plants and they last maybe one or two seasons. Mechanical harvest also often results in a lot of waste, increasing cost of the product.

4) Mechanical harvest has other consequences. Walnuts are just no longer much of a crop in the PNW because they had to be harvested by hand due to the weather. Filberts (hazelnuts) we could usually harvest before the rains, walnuts did not ripen and drop until the rainy season so the machines could not pick them out of the mud, even if the machines did not get stuck in the orchard, which they usually did. So most walnuts come from California now because they are less expensive - but they are also smaller and inferior quality.

Soft fruit, like strawberries, grapes and peaches are just not really amenable to mechanical harvest, there is a lot of these problems.

So until we have robots that can do what humans do, and that are affordable, we will still need human labor to manually harvest a lot of our food crops.

Then there is the cost of mechanization. Small family farms cannot afford the specialized harvester machines for each crop type as they start at about $100K and go up from there. That means larger farms, usually corporate farms, which means less choice, less competition, and higher costs.

Finally, e-coli/etc., does not come from human contamination. Crops are almost always raised and harvested in open fields. Contamination comes from the fact that most crops are exposed to wildlife; birds, deer, etc., raid the crops and defecate on them, contaminating them. Machines just spread that contamination, as much as human harvesting would, if not more.

The Ponzi vineyard adjoining my property regularly uses guns to scare away birds and deer.

 

[Geardo]

As a part time farmer myself raised on a farm, surrounded by farms, yes, mechanization is advancing because of cost of labor and competition.

But there are problems with mechanization:

1) There are just some crops that are really hard to mechanically harvest - e.g., strawberries. I don't think anyone will ever come up with a machine, short of a really good dexterous robot, that can pick current strawberries.

2) Because of #1, new plants/etc., are being engineered to make crops more easily harvested by machines. This often results in inferior taste and texture. Mechanized harvest also often results in picking crops before they are ripe and then artificially ripening them. Again, inferior taste and texture - not to mention nutritional value.

3) Mechanical harvest often causes plant damage - I have seen raspberry fields mechanically harvest. It really thrashes the plants and they last maybe one or two seasons. Mechanical harvest also often results in a lot of waste, increasing cost of the product.

4) Mechanical harvest has other consequences. Walnuts are just no longer much of a crop in the PNW because they had to be harvested by hand due to the weather. Filberts (hazelnuts) we could usually harvest before the rains, walnuts did not ripen and drop until the rainy season so the machines could not pick them out of the mud, even if the machines did not get stuck in the orchard, which they usually did. So most walnuts come from California now because they are less expensive - but they are also smaller and inferior quality.

Soft fruit, like strawberries, grapes and peaches are just not really amenable to mechanical harvest, there is a lot of these problems.

So until we have robots that can do what humans do, and that are affordable, we will still need human labor to manually harvest a lot of our food crops.

Then there is the cost of mechanization. Small family farms cannot afford the specialized harvester machines for each crop type as they start at about $100K and go up from there. That means larger farms, usually corporate farms, which means less choice, less competition, and higher costs.

Finally, e-coli/etc., does not come from human contamination. Crops are almost always raised and harvested in open fields. Contamination comes from the fact that most crops are exposed to wildlife; birds, deer, etc., raid the crops and defecate on them, contaminating them. Machines just spread that contamination, as much as human harvesting would, if not more.

The Ponzi vineyard adjoining my property regularly uses guns to scare away birds and deer.

Thanks for the detailed points. I would just like to see where the market goes without the equivilant of slave labor (so freaking cheap)

More localized farms with higher prices would be more stable. And better for the environment long term IMO, and if quality is that much better than mechanized mega farming, maybe they will have a better chance of success.

 

[41mag]

where the market goes without the equivilant of slave labor (so freaking cheap)

the component of $ is ultimately driven by the consumer....who is often faced with the choice of Chilean agricultural products hauled in to your market shelves, underselling local crops regardless of 'taste'.

 

[The Heretic]

Thanks for the detailed points. I would just like to see where the market goes without the equivilant of slave labor (so freaking cheap)

More localized farms with higher prices would be more stable. And better for the environment long term IMO, and if quality is that much better than mechanized mega farming, maybe they will have a better chance of success.

In general, the public doesn't know quality food if it smacked them in the face.

 

[revjen45]

"While it is sort of strategically located, I don't think they really have much to worry about militarily."

I saw an interesting scenario that suggested the Chicoms could take it in 2 days by launching a blitzkrieg out of the ports - a sudden attack starting with roll-on/roll-off armor and troop transports. Just theorizing, of course.

"In general, the public doesn't know quality food if it smacked them in the face."
Boy howdy, true dat!
Food crops are bred/designed for economic and supply chain purposes, not to taste good. Tomatoes are engineered to be durable for shipping and suitable for coloring to look ripe by immersion in a controlled atmosphere containing ethylene gas.
If you have never had a home grown Cherokee Purple you have not tasted a tomato.
That's why it's worth starting seeds indoors now.

 

[jbett98]

I met an airline pilot who flew to New Zealand on a regular basis and he was always looking to buy left handed hunting rifles to take back with him. He said that there was a huge market as they have an uncommon amount of lefties down there.