June 22nd 2009 – New Zealand Admits Overstayer Problems
Source: One News
Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman has admitted that immigration officials are effectively ignoring the problem of overstayers. The infamous dawn raids of the 1970s came after decades of turning a blind eye to Pacific Island overstayers. Now Coleman says officials are again doing the same thing, admitting that the overstayer problem is of low priority.
"Overstaying is a problem but if you look at it across on the board, overstaying affects less than 1%, it's 0.08%, so way less than 1% of migrants proportionately it's a small problem," says Coleman.
Immigration New Zealand admits it doesn't have the resources to find the estimated 16,000 overstayers.
Head of Immigration Andrew Annakin says officials expect overstayers to report on their immigration status voluntarily. "That's why largely we tend to appeal to them really to leave of their own volition to come to us and talk to us about their immigration status," says Annakin.
One expert says the service itself is part of the problem.
"The quality of decision making from the Immigration Service is often a significant factor in a person becoming an overstayer," says Chris McCarthy, an immigration advisor.
In a report issued a fortnight ago, the auditor-general drew attention to bad decision-making in immigration saying more than one in five decisions were either poor or questionable.
McCarthy says there are as many overstayers from the US and Britain as from the Pacific Islands.
But what makes Pacific Islanders vulnerable are their strong family ties, which makes them an easy target for men like Gerrard Otimi. "He has blatantly with all that understanding moved in this community. That's the big issue and that's the unforgivable issue as far as I'm concerned," says Tino Pereira, a Pacific Islands commentator.
That act has left the Pacific Island community at the centre of yet another immigration saga.
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