Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

Six month work permits is much too short. New Zealand is so far away from everywhere... should be two-year ones at least.

Er, Shortland St doesn't have to perfectly reflect NZ society. It's a soap, not a documentary.

Agree on the work permits though, we need more immigrants (preferably right around the country, not just Auckland!)

My cable modem was installed by a Filipino called Sean de Jesus, in between jobs in Miramar and Upper Hutt (I like that; Sean, son of Jesus). It's all turned to shit in the Philippines since Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos faded. Give the guys two years here, minimum, if for no other reason than for getting out there and trying. NZ needs more immigrants, and I'd choose a hard-working ethnic over a whingeing Brit any day.

Regarding Shortland Street casting, I was interested to read on the official Shorty website that actress Faye Smythe, who plays Tania (a pakeha character), was originally asked to audition for the role of Shannon (a Maori character). Smythe herself was born in South Africa.

Shortland St - hmmm how about an Indian doctor, or an Indian anything.

And where are all the safricans on Shorty? A hospital without South Africans and Indians would be a very empty place.

Re Shortland Street, wow! a Chinese playing a Filipina. Whoopdy bloody doo. Kiwis play Aussies, Aussies play Yanks, Zimbabweans play South Africans, Maori play Cubans ... etc. It's only acting and most people don't really give a shit.

The process I went through when I migrated here was:
- apply for residence, wait ages, six-month work-residence gets abolished
- come to NZ on a visitor visa
- find a job, get a 2yr work permit (easy)
- some months later, my residence finally turned up

It's a dumb system - all based on trying to second guess the employer as to whether one is actually employable in NZ.

Incidentally, what happened to all the Iranians, Turks and Israelis in the stats? Asia doesn't stop at the Iran/Afghan border - it continues for another 3000km to the Bosporos.

And while I'm being pedantic, why do Chinese people self-identify as "yellow" when they have much the same range of skin tone as Europeans?
For instance:
Wen Jiabou: http://www.china.org.cn/images/59460.jpg
George Bush: http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j186/momsquawk/george-bush.gif

They look the same colour to mean.

(I'm not being rude - I'm just genuinely interested?)

If you think that Shortland St is nothing but a soap with no social marketing agenda whatsoever, then I'm guessing you think Hollywood is all about the story.

And where are all the safricans on Shorty? A hospital without South Africans and Indians would be a very empty place.

Good point. For greater realism the safrican character could work in HR. But seriously, that does seem like a little hole in the rich Shortland Street tapestry.

wow! a Chinese playing a Filipina. Whoopdy bloody doo.

No my dear, it's a Chinese who could have quite easily played a Filipina, but the producers didn't know enough about the Philippines to realise that she could have.

actress Faye Smythe, who plays Tania (a pakeha character), was originally asked to audition for the role of Shannon (a Maori character).

Indeed: the actress who plays Tania is South African 'Coloured', that finely tuned apartheid-era racial category. When she first appeared on SS I thought "why have they gotten a Samoan afakasi girl playing a white girl? Is that big ol' heap of makeup they've got piled on her face an attempt to make her look paler? Oh well."

A hospital without South Africans and Indians would be a very empty place.

No kidding. There are moves afoot also to develop an Indian doctor character. When they killed off their last bunch of ethnic characters and brought in the white Australian doctor family, I was confused as to why they didn't make them South African.

Incidentally, what happened to all the Iranians, Turks and Israelis in the stats? Asia doesn't stop at the Iran/Afghan border - it continues for another 3000km to the Bosporos.

Stats NZ had to cut of 'Asian' arbitrarily somewhere. Those groups are within MELAA - Middle East, Latin American, and African. They are currently at around 1% or less. Sure, it doesn't make sense, but then, find me an internationally used statistical definition of 'Asian' that does.

And while I'm being pedantic, why do Chinese people self-identify as "yellow"

'Yellow' is an English word; so you may as well ask why white people call us that. Ultimately, I do think that we are on the whole, yellower of skin tone than you (assuming you are white) in *real life* as opposed to photobucket, and we don't have any particular hangups about admitting it. Yellow is also traditionally associated with the Chinese people in our own culture, because of the mythology of the Yellow Emperor and the Han people's origin in the Yellow River Valley - yellow is an imperial colour and an ethnonationalist one to some extent, identifying the fertility of the yellow-coloured silty Yellow river with the life-force of the people. Traditional Chinese racist ideologies see 'pure yellow' people as superior to the 'muddier' Southeast Asian tributaries. But - duh - there's hardly such a thing as a pure yellow skin tone. Similarly, white people are called/call themselves white, when they are not actually the colour white unless ill/dying.

"find me an internationally used statistical definition of 'Asian' that does."

You are right, of course! Every census seems different. I found these docs:
UK: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/about/ethnic_group_statistics/downloads/ethnic_group_statistics.pdf
USA: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen1990/cp-s/cp-s-1-2.pdf

I think the US is actually the most sensible in that they have three categories:
North Africa and Southwest Asia
South Asia
Other Asia

Really, Stats NZ should rename their Asian category as "East and South Asian" - then it would be geographically consistent.

Bevan:

Agree on the work permits though, we need more immigrants (preferably right around the country, not just Auckland!)

Down here in Wellington we'd be clamouring for them, were it not for its inability to handle truly international flights. I personally think Transmission Gully can wait, and spend the money instead on lengthening the airstrip.

Apropos Rita the Graphics Designer's immigration woes: were they perhaps to some extent self-inflicted?

It's an old rule but worth repeating: don't feed the trolls.

Goshdarnit! Meant to quote mark in that last one. This thing really needs an edit button.