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Why I Kept My Promise and Moved to New Zealand When Trump Was Elected

Timaru, New Zealand

By Tiffany WilliamsPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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Why I Kept My Promise and Moved to New Zealand When Trump was Elected

I have been telling lies. Not ones to harm anyone and not straight up lies, more white laced lies. With politics right now being so emotionally charged and unfashionable, it is much easier to say "I moved to New Zealand for [insert here 'family lifestyle, an adventure, the beauty]..." and the list goes on. While there is truth there, the raw, unclean answer is the 2016 election determined everything for us.

I made the comment in November 2015, to my ultra right-wing, conservative family that if Trump gets elected to consider us gone. They thought I was joking, but here I sit one year later in costal haven Timaru. A dramatic decision? I wouldn't argue with you for saying that. However, my husband and I couldn't see any other choice for us.

I am in a biracial marriage, you see, and around the election time our son was born. I watched him sleep around the clock his breathing in and out willing it on, his eating—his moments became mine and he centered my world. When the results were announced and Trump became victor, my moments with my son were filled with anxiety. The world Trump envisioned—one devoid of diversity—was one in which my son was not welcome. My husband caught me sobbing one day, and stated "Let's do it, let's go."

I realize I sound smug though I don't mean to. In actuality I had so many doubts and breakdowns, times I was ready to just be done. It took a year—a grueling, painstaking year where my husband's job offer in Wellington, New Zealand fell through, after we had sold everything, so we spent months working on obtaining my licensure for nursing through New Zealand and finding the perfect job.

Three days before we were to fly out, my husband ruptured his Achilles. This lead to another set of doubts—was this a sign? Were we ignoring it to our detriment? Around that time there was also a story circulating about a biracial boy being lynched who was saved by his sister finding him before it became too late. That story gave me that push—shove, even—and made me plod onto that plane and leave my family and friends and everyone I hold dear 7,525 miles behind on the other side of the world.

I was under the false assumption that we were so innovative and the modern immigrants of our generation. We had heard so many people from the states say they would do it up and move when the election results were clear but didn't follow through. I started to meet so many here that showed me, there are others willing to go around another bend to a new path.

I have met Kate, originally from the U.K., but she came over with her husband and two boys. Her husband and her own an organic cleaning company. She moved year ago to Christchurch but left after the earthquakes to the north island. "Yeah New Zealand has a risk of earthquakes, I saw the worst, but I would chance that any day over the threat of terrorism in the U.K."

There was Lesedi from South Africa. One of the most independent, strong but also soft care givers for my son. She is 26 weeks pregnant not finding out the sex of her baby despite numerous family attempts to convince her otherwise. She shrugs it off to there are so many gender neutral options, I don't care.

She came with her partner from South Africa as their government is getting more and more openly corrupt, and she felt now was the time to break away while she and her partner are young. We compared our governments and shook our heads from frustration at the world and the turn of everything we had known as children.

There is my friend, Ane, who came first from Tonga. She got a job at the airport she couldn't refuse but had to leave her two adorable babies and husband behind until they could afford to all be in one place. "There is crime here," she muses to me, "but so much less than elsewhere."

She tears us thinking about her children, but insists it is worth it.

I know there is strength in different journeys. When I last saw a childhood friend before leaving America, she said, "We will stay behind and fight." There is such will in that. I think of her and that passion daily.

I don't know what I hope in sharing this. Maybe it is just my soul needing to affirm what some may have guessed at. Maybe it is to give others who are on looking out at a map and looking for their way out, a nudge to know we are here. We made it—and are still living and breathing, holding a hope for change. That hope is not futile.

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