Kiwis don't all like us either

The L.A. Times Magazine checks out the surge in migration by Americans (especially from California) to New Zealand. Corie Brown says many of the 200 crew members who went to New Zealand to work on Lord of the Rings stayed. She also talked to some who don't care for the Yankee invasion.

"There is a lot of hatred of Americans who have bought big tracts," says Stephen Dawe, CEO of the New Zealand Overseas Investment Commission, the government office charged with reviewing foreign investments. That's echoed by a number of private organizations growing increasingly agitated by the Kiwi Land Rush. If the American presence isn't quite as resented as it is in, say, some parts of Iraq, it is striking a nerve.

"It's an investment for that person, but not in our economy," says Winston Peters, head of a popular nationalistic political movement seeking to make it difficult for Americans to own New Zealand property. "And we propose to stop it."