How does it feel being a FOREIGNER?

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Amazing what you find on the web...

Dateline: 1939

Our father, from Bishop's Stortford College, UK, applies for a teaching post in New Zealand, and protectionism and racism rear their Cerberus heads. 'Foreign' is the accusation ...

Yes, he was indeed.  Not many PT instructors have a PhD from a major university (Vienna) and qualifications from Cambridge, UK et al as well. And speak perfect and accentless English.

Happily, Wellington Tech stuck to its guns, father arrived and in a few years he had risen to the post of principal of the College. Even more happily, he married a young Scottish New Zealander relief teacher and had two sons. New Zealand is quite happy to call John and myself 'New Zealanders', these days.

Oh, by the way, the whingeing didn't end there. When father moved on from Wellington Tech to be the founding principal of the new Waimea College, Richmond, Nelson, the deputy headmaster and headmistress, all smiles, led a campaign to have him ousted, claiming his credentials were unproven and, indeed, false. But his PhD certificate was found in the bottom of an Austrian suitcase, the plotters discomforted, and instead of being removed, as the Education Board proposed, they were 'made' to stay on ...

Then there was the social-climbing tradesman's wife who hissed to mother at a school function 'how does it feel being married to a JEW...'

Ah, me. It's a tough life being a 'foreigner'.