The Immigration and Protection Tribunal has heard a teen's plea to remain in New Zealand. Photo: NZ Herald / Supplied
Migrant advocates are lashing out at the government's proposed deportation laws, saying they put Pacific people at risk and are hypocritical.
The proposed changes to the Immigration Act, announced on 4 September, will make it easier to deport non-citizens who have committed a serious crime but have lived in New Zealand long-term. Specifically, those who have committed a serious crime will be able to be deported even if they have lived in New Zealand for 20 years - double the current residency threshold of 10 years.
Critics have taken particular issue with the proposed policy as well as the timing of its release, with one community group asking "what game" the government was playing.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford announced the proposed changes on the same day her ministry released new overstayer figures - which identified Tonga and Samoa nationals as among those who were most likely to overstay visas.
The announcement also came a week before Prime Minister Christopher Luxon talked up regional unity at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders' summit in the Solomon Islands.
"We're deeply committed to Pacific regionalism," Luxon told media in Honiara.
Migrant advocates say his words contradict his government's imperative to make it easier to deport long-term residents who have committed serious crimes, particularly as New Zealand's policy makers were aware that its deportation laws contribute to organised crime in Pacific nations - similar to the ongoing impact of Australia's 501 deportees in New Zealand.
In 2022, a research report showed that New Zealand returned 400 criminal deportees to Pacific nations between 2013 and 2018. The report from the Lowy Institute also said that criminal deportees from New Zealand, as well as Australia and the United States, were a significant contributor to transnational crime in the Pacific.
Immigration New Zealand figures showed that, while nearly 21,000 people had overstayed their visa as of the beginning of July, the vast majority complied with visa conditions.
The figures identified that Tonga had the highest number of nationals who overstayed visas, followed by China, the US and Samoa. Despite that, in the case of Tonga and Sāmoa nationals, fewer than two percent had overstayed their visas in the past two years.
Community organisation Aotearoa Tonga Response Group said the behaviour of the government over both issues had been totally disingenuous.
"What game is this government playing? Why do they release the information on overstayers? And secondly, bring in a policy that actually will victimise and we will target Pacific, or Samoans and Tongans in terms of racial profiling by this new law?" chair Anahila Kanongata'a said.
Kanongata'a, a former labour MP, said her own background showed overstayers were "not a problem to deport" - particularly as the amount of people who breached visa conditions were "minute".
"My own story has an overstayer background. My parents were overstayers, and because they were allowed to stay, I was able to grow up here, study here, contribute to New Zealand, and also serve as a member of parliament," she said.
"My view is that overstayers are not a problem to deport. They are people with potential to contribute if treated with dignity."
Stanford did not respond to Kanongata'a's comments when asked by RNZ Pacific. Nor did she respond to comments put to her from Green Party immigration spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez-March's about the proposed changes.
Menéndez-March expressed similar concerns to Kanongata'a.
"To announce those things on the very same day we received the updated statistics of overstayer figures, it tells me that this government is more interested in painting a picture of dehumanisation towards migrants and overstayers," he said.
"As opposed to looking at what our community leaders have been telling us for several years, which is the energy needs to go to ensuring we have a solution to lift overstayers from conditions of precarity and exploitation, which is what the Pacific Leadership Forum and many other advocates the back of the Dawn Raid apology highlighted."
Menéndez-March also said the government needed to face-up to the impact of New Zealand's policies in the Pacific.
A report from the UN office on Drug and Crime last year identified that New Zealand's deportation policies were partly to blame for increasingly sophisticated organised crime networks across the Pacific region. That in turn contributed to drug, health and social crises in several Pacific nations, like Sāmoa, Tonga and Fiji.
The findings of that report have also been noted by the current government's Ministerial advisory group on Transnational, Serious and Organised Crime.
Menendez-March believed people should face the consequences of their action, but deportation should never be part of how that is achieved.
"That is very different from what the government is doing, which is very much what we criticise other countries for like Australia, which is to extend the time someone could be deported, including members of communities that may have not lived at all in the countries that we're deporting them to."
Kanongata'a compared New Zealand's position to Australia.
"If we look at the 501 deportations from Australia, it's already giving us [the] evidence base that deporting people who have lived and built a life in a country and just dumping them off here... all those issues came about," she said.
"When we're in the Pacific, we talk about how we are great family and special relationship, and then we come to New Zealand and we betray that trust. So Australia have done it to us, so now we are, in turn, going to do it to the Pacific."
In a statement announcing the proposed changes earlier this month, Stanford said that migrants should follow visa rules.
She said that the proposed changes addressed gaps in current deportation policy, adding that further details of proposed changes would be released later this year.
