Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australian bureau. This week's edition was written by Pete MacKenzie, a reporter based in Auckland, New Zealand.
In 2022, Lucy Schultz was fed up. She was working as a wedding photographer and traveling around the US with her husband in a camper. Everywhere they went, communities seemed polarized and the news was bleak. “Our opinion of America was at its lowest,” she says. “It was a time warp of endless chaos.”
Schultz was then hired by an American client who wanted to get married in New Zealand – she had visited the country once before, in 2014, before meeting her husband – and later described the remote Pacific island to him, but “my description sounded like fantasy and he didn't listen,” she said.
After his mission, Ms. Schultz's husband joined him on a road trip through New Zealand's sparsely populated north. The embrace of New Zealand was easy. At a small café near a golden beach, he turned to her and asked, “When are you moving?”
In an increasingly tense atmosphere in the U.S., New Zealand has become an attractive destination for many Americans, just like Schultz. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the number of Americans moving to New Zealand increased by 65 percent. During the 2020 presidential debate, “how to move to New Zealand” was a trending Google search. As the next U.S. election looms, those who have moved say they have few regrets.
“One of the great things about leaving the U.S. is being able to escape the chaos and hit the unsubscribe button,” said Schultz, 31. “Living in the U.S., politics and elections can be stressful on your nervous system, and I was able to escape the chaos.”
Schultz and her husband have settled near the small North Island town of Hamilton, and are in the process of applying for permanent residency. She's pleased with how functional the country is. “This might be a weird example, but the public toilets aren't a nightmare. You go to the toilet and the hand soap dispenser works,” she says. “Or there'll be a park with a grill that actually works.”
She volunteers at a nearby nature reserve, where she goes on walks through native forest, and is impressed by the friendliness of the country. “Maybe I'm a bit overly optimistic,” she admits, but she's also struck by “the sense of community that's so ingrained in the culture – New Zealanders look out for each other.”
Other Americans are similarly enthusiastic. Sophie Zabaleta, 27, was studying to be a teacher in Alabama before leaving for a study abroad program in New Zealand in 2020. She planned to stay for two months but extended her stay due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
She quickly fell in love with the country. Her host family took her to the beach, and she fell in love with the coastal scenery. She got a teaching job in Oakland, the country's largest city, which she found much less stressful than the U.S. Her two-month trip stretched into four years and may become a permanent resident.
There are downsides: Food and rent are much more expensive in New Zealand than in her home country, Zavaleta said. And she misses her family. But with the U.S. presidential election looming, “I'm happy to be living here and not necessarily having to deal with all the political madness that's going to happen over there,” she said.
New Zealand has a points-based immigration system that primarily requires immigrants to have certain skills or to fill certain jobs to fill labor shortages. According to Statistics New Zealand, 5,874 Americans moved to New Zealand between June 2022 and June 2023.
Todd Henry, a 41-year-old bar owner in Auckland, grew up in Pennsylvania and lived briefly in New Zealand several times before moving there permanently in 2013. He said the positivity in New Zealand was in stark contrast to the atmosphere in the United States. “There was a negative vibe in a lot of the conversations I had with people. It's hard to put into words, but it felt like a burden. The whole thing was a political disaster,” he said.
With each visit, Henry has noticed growing interest in his decision to move. “I've seen it change from 'What is New Zealand and why do you want to move?' to 'How can I move?'” he said.
He's noticed a common shift in New Zealand, which recently saw divisive elections in which conservative parties swept away a liberal government. “Unfortunately, in some ways New Zealand is moving in the same direction as the United States, just not as dramatically,” Henry said.
Still, Henry and other Americans who emigrated to New Zealand said they were shocked by the situation in their home country. “It's weird to see it from here,” Henry said. Few wanted to return home. “It's too late for America to be saved by voting alone,” Shultz said. “If I thought I could save it, I'd still be here right now.”
Here are this week's stories.
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