By Ken Schram, political commentary

Maybe New Zealand is on to something. The country’s immigration department has decided it can’t afford to let people come and live in New Zealand if those people are going to end up being a significant drain on the nation’s health resources.

So, what exactly does that mean? Well in part, it means no fat people allowed.

Richie Trezise found that out the hard way.

Richie and his wife had a hankerin’ to leave the life they had in Wales and move to what native New Zealanders call “The Land of the Long White Cloud.”

Richie squared things up with a New Zealand employer and applied for a visa.

That’s when he hit a snag.

Seems that Richie’s body mass index (BMI measures a persons weight in relation to their height) was at a hefty 42. Anything over 30 is considered obese.

So Richie went on a crash diet, and after shedding about two inches from his waist, the doors to New Zealand swung open.

That was back in September.

His wife, also portly, was to have followed shortly thereafter.

Alas, despite valiant ongoing dietary efforts, Mrs. Trezise has been unable to meet New Zealand’s weight requirements.

Immigration officials tell her she is still too fat to join her husband. She takes no solace in knowing that many other people have also been turned down by immigration officials after medical tests revealed that they too were obese.

A couple of things came to mind after reading this story. One was that New Zealand must be the country supplying airplane manufacturers with the dimensions of the seats installed back in coach.

The other was why is New Zealand the nation that’s apparently leading the world in fighting the obesity epidemic?

I mean, wasn’t it the United States that all but created get fat fast food? Shouldn’t we then be the ones at the forefront of casting fat people into the fiery pit of discriminatory hell?

Oh sure, we’re at the cutting edge in some regards. According to one study, we quietly condone the fact that 16 percent of employers in the U.S. deny giving a fat woman a job regardless of her qualifications or abilities.

Another 44 percent say they would only hire fat women under certain circumstances.

Fat guys, on the other hand, don’t skate on such thin employment ice. Maybe because unlike their gender opposites, fat guys are not judged as lazy, lacking self-control and unmotivated, but I’m sure we’ll work on that.

Anyway, I think the U.S. is doing a pretty good job at putting fat people in their place when it comes to employment and social situations, but we’re obviously lagging behind the folks in New Zealand when it comes to a much higher level of exclusion.

We need a group of paternalistic politicians to throw their weight behind legislation similar to New Zealand’s.

We need some bureaucratic crusaders to plump up the law on keeping fat foreigners from emigrating to the United States.

And once that is accomplished, I think it’s high time we do something about all those Eastern Europeans who insist on wearing black socks with Bermuda shorts.

Ken Schram is a KOMO-TV and radio commentator whose radio feature with John Carlson, “The Commentators,” airs weekdays from 3 to 6 p.m. on AM 570 KVI. E-mail: kenschram@komo4news.com.