The scale of these post-WW2 migrations was, relative to the home-nations populations, tremendous.  Scroll down to Table 1.1 in that last link.  There are nearly three times as many Cook Islanders living in New Zealand as in the Cook Islands.  For Niue the ratio is more than ten:  22,476 Niueans in New Zealand with only 2,166 left back home.  Niue may be the first nation (yes, it’s a nation) to be completely emptied out by emigration.

Maoris and PIs are all Polynesians speaking related languages, but there are considerable ethnic differences.  Even down at the level of biology this is true.  Cavalli-Sforza’s monumental History and Geography of Human Genes shows the Maori-Samoan genetic distance as 0.06—sixty percent of the English-Polynesian difference!  The Maori-Cook Islander genetic distance is smaller, only 0.015—equivalent to an Italian and a Basque.  Richard Lynn’s IQ estimates for Maoris and PIs are 90 and 85 respectively.

While of course there is much variation, as there is in any large group, Polynesian New Zealanders as a whole are underachievers.  In crime statistics, for example:  the Maori, who are 14 percent of the population, represent roughly half of all criminal justice offenders and victims.  Polynesians—Maori and PI both—are way over-represented among high school dropouts.  PIs are unemployed at twice the national rate.  Illegitimacy is soaring—from 6 percent to 75 percent in 35 years among Maoris, according to former finance minister Roger Douglas . . . and so on.  Several of these underclass pathologies were on display in the 1994 movie Once Were Warriors.

The longer an American looks at New Zealand, the stronger gets the déjà vu effect.  Politically, the Polynesian New Zealanders vote left, which is to say for the greenish-progressive Labour Party.  (The Maoris have their own party, but the convoluted electoral system permits a voter to split-vote; Maoris commonly vote both Maori and Labour.)  However, along with the desire for a dole or a government job goes much social conservatism.  Evangelical Christianity is strong among PIs, and issues like gay rights can keep them away from the polls.

And though the Maoris have not yet produced a Louis Farrakhan, Islam is making inroads.  Two New Zealanders are listed in the current edition of The 500 Most Influential Muslims (page 129 of this rather large pdf file), one of them a Maori.  The book’s compilers tell us that: “Islam is an increasingly important religion for the indigenous population of New Zealand, and is the fastest-growing religion among the Maori community.”  Lucky for them, there is a plentiful supply of sheep’s eyeballs.

New Zealand diversicrats confront these issues with the same vapid babble we hear from our own.  We must fix the schools; we must ostracize and stamp out “hate”; we must respect our differences.

Alas: after half a century of this stuff here in the U.S.A., it is pathetically clear that nobody has a clue how to “fix the schools”; that neither mistrust, nor contempt, nor pity, nor weary indifference, necessarily include any component of hatred; and that a willingness to respect big differences in rates of crime and illegitimacy is awfully hard to inculcate.

Well, well, perhaps the Kiwis will have better luck than we’ve had.