IN EXILE

The team of five million — that was the slogan that guided New Zealand through the pandemic. But what about the one million New Zealanders who live overseas? A recent survey by Kea, a business association for Kiwis living abroad, suggests that one in every three New Zealand expats wants to return home. Others have family or business ties here and want to visit frequently. But for the past couple of months, places in managed isolation facilities have been near-impossible to get. Some people who need to travel urgently are so desperate that they’re paying four-figure sums to tech firms offering to use bots — which make it even more difficult for all the others to obtain a place. Many New Zealanders outside the country are increasingly frustrated and feel that the MIQ-system is deeply unfair. We talked to nine of them.

Craig Chapman, 51, saturation diver, Aberdeen, Scotland

I am a saturation diver. I go down to work in a bell every day, up to 300 metres under the surface, but usually around 120–150 metres, breathing a helium/oxygen mix. Human beings can’t breathe normal air at these depths. If I came up again too quickly afterwards I’d die. We decompress once at the end of the job, so it takes anything up to seven days before I can breathe fresh air again. So I guess you could say that I am pretty used to travelling to places that are difficult to reach and hard to come back from.

But right now I am facing probably the hardest journey of my life. I want to return to New Zealand and I can’t. There aren’t any places in MIQ. And when I applied to MBIE for a special allocation, I was told I didn’t fit the categories. And so I will be stuck in Aberdeen, Scotland where I have no family or place to go.

I was born in Blenheim and that is where I still live, together with my wife. My job requires me to be away from home a lot. Normally I’m six weeks on the