Tonight on Close Up ` they say hard work never harmed anyone. I've got a job; I pay tax. Unless you plan on moving here. The immigration red tape that will split a family. To think for one minute the three of us can get residency status and one cannot is just beyond me. Due to the live nature of Close Up, captions for some items may be incomplete. ONE News captions by Hannah Reynolds and Angela Alice. Close Up captions by Desney Thorogood and John Ling. I got stopped on the street walking home the other night by a young woman desperate to tell her story. And the story just didn't seem right. It was about an immigration system that was frustratingly inflexible. That means her sister can stay, but she must go, all because she didnt want to be a sponge. Michael Holland got on the case. They are exactly as they appear. Do I look like a granny? Good mates who happen to be sisters. Look at this. Hideous. One of you, then. Get amongst this one. Get right amongst it. Two peas in a pod. We've had the same education, the same upbringing. Everything is the same about us. In the eyes of everyone, that is, except Immigration, who see British-born Christine and Pamela as separates rather than sisters. In fact, if officials get their way, Christine will be on her way back to Blighty before the year's out. VOICE BREAKS: It turned out thjat my whole family have ended up getting residency, and I am going to have to go back to the UK. It hurts? > A lot. I feel angry that a country has the right to rip a family apart. I don't like that. The Jebb family's passports tell the story. Mum, Dad and Pamela all have residency, while Christine's work visa is fast running out. This is where I want to be. I want to be in NZ ` home. To think, for one minute, that three of us can get residency status and one cannot is just beyond me. It's` It's ludicrous. It's really difficult, actually, when you've got two children. They are both the same. We've been a unit all our lives. You know, we work hard. We have never done anything wrong. As it transpire, work is what 24-year-old Christine did do wrong. Opting out of a teaching diploma at Auckland University soon after her arrival in 2009, she transferred her study visa to a working-holiday visa and went to work. If I didn't work and just sat on my bum, I actually would have got residency because I would have been dependant. But because I went out and got a job, I can't stay in NZ. In other words, if she'd schived, taken life easy until her residency came through,... Do you want to buy me a rose? She earned above a certain threshold. That deemed her to be independent. ...she'd now be in the same position as 22-year-old Pamela, who entered as a dependant child and was assessed accordingly. I was at uni. I was studying, um, and they handed it to me on a plate. It's irrational. It's certainly not equitable. Um, it's unfair. It doesn't fit the values that you expect of NZ. That's the beach one. Family life is supposed to be held in high regard. Sisterly love in Rotorua. Flick back a decade or so, and it was the family's holiday experiences in this country that sold them on one day settling here. Oh, we loved it. Wanted to come back, and we did. We came back for a second holiday and then, obviously, we came back to live here. Dad works for a major infrastructure company in Auckland, and Mum's opened an NZ arm of the firm she worked for in Britain. I look way happier than you do in a photo for, like, once in my life. We saw it as a great place to make a new life, um, as a family, but not as three-quarters of a family. She's a good girl, She's done nothing apart from work and contribute to NZ. Do you feel just slightly guilty? > I do. I feel bad. If I could give her mine, I'd give her my residency tomorrow. And guilt also sits heavy with Christine. Her family's decided that if she can't stay, they'll all go. Their St Heliers home already on the market. If this, as the last resort, is not successful, then we've got no option but to leave, and we'll leave as a family, the four of us. Uh, it was always intended that the four of us would come and live here as a family, and if one of us can't get residency, then we will depart as a family and live somewhere where we're accepted. Is that NZ's loss? Yes, big loss. You may say, 'Well, Christine is 24, and she is old enough.' That's fine. But we are still a unit. That's still my flesh. That is my daughter. And, no, I can't stay. I-I would like to, but I can't. Not if Christine cannot. Nicest part of Auckland ` Tamaki Drive. That flag was supposed to symbolise your new life? BOTH: Yeah. We started it. We had it within our grasp, but it's slipping, and we don't like that. And it's upsetting and it's painful. It's sad. If there is such a thing as discreation, what's your plea to the minister? My appeal to you, Kate Wilkinson, is to allow my daughter to stay. I think we have demonstrated we can contribute to NZ. I think we could make a good life here, but without your support, it's not possible. There's nowhere else I want to be. This is home? > This is home, yeah. And from a hurting mum... Please. Please. We're constantly told the importance of families sticking together, so bureaucracy breaking one up seems so unfair. Immigration lawyers say it's a minefield. The minister in charge, Kate Wilkinson, has the discretion to intervene. We got on to her office, but she will not do so in this case. You'd think the Jebbs are exactly the immigrants we would want. and you can bet our loss will be Australia's gain. Might be time to be a bit more flexible. We want to know what you think and any message you want passed on to the minister. Head to our website or email us at close up at tvnz.co.nz or like us on Facebook.com/CloseUp. Think Newton discovering gravity; Rutherford splitting the atom. A science discovery announced today is big. It's Big Bang Theory big. The Higgs boson particle could tell us what gives all matter in the universe its size and shape. They found it after smashing atoms together in the Hadron Collider. Right there, in the energy released, was the so-called God particle, but believe it or not, I'm no quantum mechanics expert. Let's hand over to a super-brain to explain. We have this machine which accelerates protons in two different directions. They slam together, creating 14 trillion electron volts ` temperatures and energies not seen since the instant of the Big Bang. When these two beams of protons collided, fantastic energy. BOOM! A spray of subatomic particles. Then we run the videotape backwards. We run it backwards to find what particle existed at the very instant of the collision. The Big Bang Theory simply said the universe expanded 13.7 billion years ago. But what put the bang in the Big Bang? Why did it bang? Where is the energy that drives the Big Bang? The Higgs particle could have the key to this whole cosmic puzzle. And we've got our own in the big-brain department. Experimental physicist Mark Kruse is at a quantum-physics conference in Melbourne. He's a Kiwi and has been part of the Atlas team at CERN, doing work on the Higgs boson. Are you as excited as everyone else is? I am. It is an extremely exciting moment in physics. It would be like being in the Beatles and you just brought the White album out. It is. We do not know that we eventually found the Higgs boson yet. We're definitely seeing something. If it is, it is the discovery of a whole new fundamental nature of space. It is what gives particles mass. They won't have to rip up all the textbooks. It is really just adding to the textbooks. The textbooks now have the standard model of particle physics, but the standard model was missing this piece of how mass is generated. It is just in addition to the textbooks. The standard model was broken down somehow, and we have good reason to believe that this is part of a much grander theory of the universe that we have no access to at the moment, that will rewrite the textbooks. At one point we thought atoms are the smallest bits. In another 50 years time, will someone be sitting here saying something different? There is things that we just don't understand how they occurred the way they occurred. This is just the beginning, and there will be a lot more questions. We still know very little about how and why the universe evolved the way it did. And Mark is giving a public talk called 'Why We Care About the Large Hadron Collider' at Auckland University on July 12th. It's free, and details are on our website. Coming up ` getting shirty over the Abs. Is the NZ Rugby Union flogging off the jersey behind the fans' back? And how a passion for cheerleading... I love it. It's my life. It has been for the last five years. ...could get this girl a free university education. Take a look at this. It's Benji Marshall, Kiwis captain, in full flight. Now take a minute. What do you see? What do you really notice? Is it a top athlete running for a try, working hard for the Kiwis? What about this? Ritchie firing on all cylinders. A World Cup winning captain on the move. These two represent NZ on the international stage. They both play with heart, and we support them wholeheartedly. So are you paying any attention to what's on the jersey? Do you think any less of Benji with the branding? Could the day come when Ritchie looks like this? And would Don Clark turn in his grave if it did? If rumours are to be believed, it may not be too far away. But let's not deny it. Sports and sponsorship go hand in hand. Can this jersey realistically stay all black? Here's Jehan Casinader. RAPS: # All black everything. Black cards, black cars. # All black everything. All` All black everything. # The All Blacks jersey is unique. It's got a history and a legacy that not a lot of other sports teams have got. A logo on the front of an All Black jersey is a property. The All Blacks have to stay as a world class team, and unfortunately, what that means is we need to compete commercially as well. It's not what we want to hear. The rugby union is reportedly in talks with American insurance company AIG. It's considering putting the AIG logo on the All Black jersey. They'll use the All Blacks to help promote some of their products and services, I'd imagine. Matt West, a marketing man who once looked after the Adidas brand for Asia-Pacific. He says professional rugby comes with a cost and we need new ways to pay for it. People want to be paid big salaries. We see players going in for contract increases and the like. Who's going to pay for that stuff? Inevitably, sponsors are gonna pay for it. Sponsorship of the jersey is not new. It had Steinlager in there for years, didn't it? Now it's got Adidas. They were very respectful of the All Black heritage, and so it's about finding the right partner. In other sports, sponsor logos are plastered across team jerseys. It's now seen as just part of the game, with huge rewards for the best. Barcelona was the last bastion of not having a logo on their jersey, and they've, obviously, recently gone to the Qatar Foundation for 150 million euros. They were in big trouble financially. They've ended up solving their financial problems with this huge world record of a deal. Matt West says the NZRU has a duty to protect the All Black jersey. If you're gonna sell this property, make sure you get top, top dollar for it. I'm thinking about $100m ` that's the number I have in my head ` over five years. It's a lot of cash, but is it enough to put the name of an American insurance company on our favourite Kiwi jersey? The NZRU says it's in discussions with potential sponsors. It won't say whether AIG is one of them. But the union says Adidas currently has sole rights to put its logo on the jersey. Now the man with the inside knowledge on what could be happening to the jersey is rugby journalist and blogger Jed Thian. He joins me know in the Wellington studio. How do we know this is true? Because I have had people tell me this. I have been asked what I am doing there. The paranoia is huge. Other organisations are also waiting to get access to the All Blacks. They are not willing to put that sort of thing on the line and talk about it. Everything might be for sale. As more and more things are sold, we prove a point about keeping advertising off the jersey. Some deals are smart. Barcelona's deal was incredible. It is unacceptable to put any form of advertising on the All Black jersey. If the current partner to New Zealand rugby also believed that, they would blackout their logo in support of them. We need to have some respect for these guys. 12 months after winning a championship, these guys are going to have to go out there with not an all black jersey. I have no problem with having a commercial platform for the New Zealand Rugby union to move forward. But not about sponsorship on the jersey. They are not showing enough respect to the guys. The New Zealand Maori team has a fantastic record. They are not showing genuine respect from the union to those players. Just ahead ` wouldn't you jump for joy or make a racket at the chance of a free education? It is just going to be a huge adventure. We'll tell you how next. Think cheerleaders, think bimbos with pom-poms. But how about cheerleading and a $175,000 university scholarship to the States. Don't scoff. Cheerleading is a sport in the States, and like other sports, is opening up doors for our young athletes. So has your kid got what it takes? Here's Matt Chisholm. MUSIC PUMPS I love it. It's my life. It has been for the last five years. I love being able to call myself a cheerleader. MUSIC CONTINUES I'm a good stunter. I bring to the team basing skills. I've been named best base in team NZ last year. What does that mean? > It means that I'm good at lifting people and throwing people in the air. At just 16, Liv Ford is in that enviable position of being able to do pretty much anything she wants with her life,... Five, six, seven. Turn. > ...and she's choosing cheerleading. It is more of a sport than I think any other sport. It's funny when people try and tell me that cheerleading isn't a sport, because I'd love to see them try do what we do. And before you scoff, this is a sport that'll probably take Liv to a university in the United States... It is the land of opportunity. ...on a four-year all-expenses-paid scholarship ` a package worth about NZ$175,000. She's doing everything right. She's training hard, she's going through all the processes, so I'm very confident that she is going to get a scholarship and a good one too. It is kind of like the movies, I guess. Frat parties? (LAUGHS) Maybe. Is Mum worried? I think so. I think so. (LAUGHS) I don't think being in the States is any different to being in Otago. I can still get on a plane and go and see her. I can still talk to her every day. Liv is just one of many student athletes on Play Atlantic's books. They're a Kiwi company headed up by a couple of Poms who have been there, done that ` not as male cheerleaders, but out on the tennis court. I went to Nashville, Tennessee. I had an incredible time. I played tennis, I did my bachelors degree, and then I started recruiting, and that's where I really found that international kids really struggled with all the eligibility rules, and that's how Play Atlantic came about. In the last year, former high school friends Charlie and Sheridan have placed 50 Kiwi students in American universities across a number of different sports. Their fee ` up to $4000. It depends on... You know, how much someone wants to spend will depend on how much time and commitment we give them. So how good do you have to be? We don't get the top Kiwi kids, you know. We don't get the top swimmers, you know. They're training for the Olympics. They've got the benefits here. We get the 'middle of the road' kids ` the kids who are academically bright, but probably won't have the opportunities to continue, because they're at a regional lower national level. Over there, there's just hundreds of kids who are just all really good, you know. There's no bad people who play college tennis. Chris Simich, who's just finished his first year at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, believes that competition has improved his game. < What do the girls make of the accent? They love it, eh. (LAUGHS) Yeah, it's, um` it's` You feel a lot more special than you do here, put it that way. (LAUGHS) All fun or a bit of hard work too? Normally we get one day off a week, and I don't think I had more than two days off in 10 months, so... (LAUGHS) So it's not all beer and Skittles like you see in the movies. There's pressure. They're playing every day, they're travelling every day, and they've got to get back` you know get back at 11 o'clock at night, and they've got a mid-term, an exam, the next morning, and if they don't get a certain mark, they can't play. It's a tough gig, but they say it's well worth it. I leave this week back over there to play some tournaments, and then just hopefully finish up my last three years and see where I go from there ` whether I get a job over there and maybe a wife or something. (LAUGHS) And as for Liv... We can't guarantee you're gonna get a scholarship, but we don't sign anyone if we don't think they're gonna get a scholarship. < What happens if she doesn't make it? She will. And then it's all of a sudden gonna, like, dawn on me that I'm moving to America, but I'm excited. More than anything I'm excited. It is just going to be a huge adventure. That's NZ Close Up. Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air.