Immigration Bill

I will take what I trust will be a relatively short call on Part 3 of the Immigration Bill. Part 3 is another very substantial part of this bill. It establishes a universal visa system. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee did quite a bit of work around this area, and recommended a number of minor and technical amendments. As a result of that work, Part 3 has a greater clarity about it and reads in a more logical fashion.

The National Government certainly supports a simpler visa system. The single term “visa” will replace the terms currently used in the Immigration Act 1987: “visa”, “permit”, and “exemption”. Instead, the term “visa” will be the only term used, and there will be three types of visa: residence class, temporary entry class, and transit. As I have said, the purpose of this change is to simplify things. The bill establishes a universal visa system that maintains flexibility in managing people’s travel into New Zealand and their time while in New Zealand. The bill gets rid of the old distinctions so we will no longer talk about visas, permits, and exemptions. It uses the one term to refer to the authority to travel to, to enter, and to stay in New Zealand.

A universal visa system means that all foreign nationals require a visa to be in New Zealand. Visas can be granted, or they can be deemed to have been granted. That is to maintain flexibility in managing risk and the range of unique circumstances under which a foreign national may enter New Zealand. I am interested to note that, for example, a visa may be deemed to be granted when a foreign national enters New Zealand territory in Antarctica. This is because he or she may travel directly to Antarctica from another country, rather than through New Zealand.

The bill introduces a new concept in allowing interim visas to be granted for the purpose of maintaining a foreign national’s lawful status in New Zealand where he or she has applied for a further visa and his or her application is under consideration. That is fair, reasonable, and proper. It is a positive change that should benefit foreign nationals who wish to extend their stay in New Zealand. I commend Part 3 to the Committee.

Part 3 of the Immigration Bill contains the clause that will become known as section 52. That section replaces section 35A of the Immigration Act, which we all are used to today. Of course, every member of this House, particularly constituency MPs who have undertaken constituency casework in the immigration area, will know that this is the section under which cases are taken to the Minister of Immigration. Often it is the absolute last resort as somebody desperately tries to have his or her issues addressed.

I do not want anyone to think that section 35A and the new section 52 are actually all about the most gut-wrenching of circumstances. I got into a taxi the other day, and I had ordered the taxi using just my first name. The taxi driver picked me up from Parliament, and when I got into the taxi he said: “It’s Lianne Dalziel, isn’t it?”. I said yes, and then he said that I was the reason that his mother-in-law is allowed to live in this country. It was so nice. This was really important because there had been a change in policy, and we said that when we changed the policy we would allow a little more discretion, a little more flexibility, and a slightly more humanitarian approach over that transitional period. That is what we did for his mother-in-law. It was not part of an amnesty or transitional policy in that respect; she really did qualify under the previous policy, but she missed out under the new policy. For the sake of the family, who were well-settled in New Zealand, we made a decision to intervene.

Another case was recently brought to my attention by my sister. She spoke at a conference in a different city from the one where I live. My sister said that she had been picked up at the airport, and that the woman who had picked her up had not realised that she was my sister until right at the very end of the presentation. My sister, who is a very clever presenter on issues of privacy, actually said to the audience—and I am getting a bit sick of it really—“I suppose you have all been wondering. No, she is not my mother.” She continues to say that, but I tell her that as she gets older she will not be able to say it any more. But this woman just froze, and after everyone had gone, as she was taking my sister away, she burst into tears and hugged her. She said that I had saved her life. The reason she said that was that I had allowed her to come to New Zealand when she was at high risk of consequences from a severely violent domestic relationship in another country. She did not qualify under our strict criteria, but under this provision—section 35A; the new section 52, as it will become known—we allowed her to stay. That is the importance of this clause.

The reason I got up to speak on this part is that I think it is really important that we think very carefully about how this discretion is exercised. It must be exercised without fear or favour. There are National MPs in this House who know that I exercise that discretion without fear or favour. I recall that one of the very first phone calls I got after I became Minister of Immigration in 1999 was from Tony Ryall. He said he had had contact with people from Zimbabwe who were really concerned about their ability to get to New Zealand. They had relatives here. They could not buy a ticket home because they were not really going to go home, and they asked whether there was something we could do about it. I took that to Cabinet straight away, we intervened, and we created a special policy that enabled a group of people to come to New Zealand. Thank goodness we did! If we look at the consequences of what happened to those who remained, we will see that we did a very good thing. That was an approach from a National Party member. I think it is always important to remember that we are all members of Parliament representing our constituencies, and those constituents must be treated without fear or favour.

I will not go through the particular examples of the cases where I have felt it has been a bit disappointing of late in terms of the intervention. But if we do not hold on to that principle, then we will lose it. I think it is very important that Ministers are able to look at the very human side of immigration, which are circumstances that we ourselves would not think could possibly happen to us.

I will follow on from the two speeches that have been made on Part 3 of the Immigration Bill. The first speech, made by Allan Peachey, was a very good explanation of what is happening in this part. Basically we are replacing a series of visas with a much more simplistic system whereby people have a common visa. There are some differences for people who come into the country under limited visas, but essentially the bill replaces the present complex system with something a lot simpler and easier to manage.

I think Lianne Dalziel made some very good points. All members of this House will have engaged in the activity of assisting their constituents through the immigration process. For constituent MPs, especially in an urban constituency, that is probably the bulk of our work. In my constituency about 70 percent of my work is on immigration-related issues. We are constantly doing that work. Immigration is one of the few areas where there are discretions. If people do not pay their taxes, there is not a lot we can do. But if someone wants to stay in New Zealand, we have the ability to advocate on that person’s behalf to the Minister or to the Department of Labour. I must admit that during the term I have been in this House, both Labour and National have been very good to deal with in respect of immigration cases, and we expect that to continue in the future so that constituent MPs can represent their people and assist them in areas of concern to them.

I think this visa process goes to a fundamental question. We have a problem in immigration in New Zealand in that we do not specify to people who come into New Zealand what holding a temporary visa actually means. When people enter New Zealand on a work permit or a visitor’s visa, it is a temporary visa. There is no way of looking at it other than that: it is a temporary visa. If someone comes in under a residency programme, the system is different. Once a lot of migrants and a lot of people who come to New Zealand as visitors or on a work permit get settled here, they forget that they came in on a temporary visa and have an expectation that they will be able to stay here. Their children have been born here, their children are attending school here, and they have built up family connections. They have friends, a community has been built around them, and they have a work environment. They have made New Zealand their home. It normally takes a couple of years to do that, and they do not then realise that they entered New Zealand on a temporary visa. They are the people who come to our offices and say that they have sons or daughters born here, and they have worked for 3 or 4 years in New Zealand industries when we have wanted them to. They ask what the story is, and say that they need to be able to stay in New Zealand. That situation has been going on for many, many years.

The crucial point is that we need to educate people, when they come to the border, on what their visa status actually is. People need to understand what a temporary visa is, in comparison with a long-term visa, leading to residency. That is a major part of the way that people live their lives while they are here. If they do not understand that difference, they can easily forget their entry point and then have an unrealistic expectation when compared with the original visa they entered New Zealand on. I think the approach taken here will assist in that education process. We need to engage in education so that people do not have unrealistic expectations, and so that they have a sense of certainty about their status. There is nothing worse for people living in a country that they have made their home than to find that they do not have the status they thought they had. That is the situation that we are confronted with time and time again as constituent members of Parliament.

I think this is an important aspect of the bill, both from the policy that it represents and also from the need to educate people who come into New Zealand so that we give the right signals and people can understand the journey that can come with being a New Zealand resident and then a New Zealand citizen. I commend this bill to the House.

It has been quite useful to listen to the tales from Lianne Dalziel and others on the immigration cases that come before us. I think one thing that humanises all members of Parliament is that each of us has immigration cases. We all have to show our real compassion when dealing with those cases, and, when making our submissions on them, we have to try to get the Associate Minister of Immigration to show that compassion.

I think that in the case of clause 52, which has been referred to by other speakers, it is very useful to take into account the many varied circumstances that people and families find themselves in. Unfortunately that seems to be a little countered from another direction in the New Zealand Immigration Service, and that is through the immigration profiling group, which seems to go to great lengths holding up a lot of quite valid cases for temporary visas or other visas. Although it is very good to have this provision on exceptional circumstances in clause 52, it really should not be up to the Minister to correct so many wrong decisions of the New Zealand Immigration Service.

The other type of visa I would like to talk about a little bit, and which is included in Part 3, is the transit visa. I think New Zealand has got a bit carried away with transit visa procedures over the last little while, and that is upsetting many people, particularly in the Indian community. There are a whole range of countries, particularly richer countries, whose citizens have visa-free entry to New Zealand and therefore can arrive and just come in.

Transit through New Zealand does not create a problem if someone is coming from Europe and stopping off in New Zealand before they go off to Niue, Fiji, or wherever. But it is a particular problem for people from some other countries such as India, where people now have to trot down to the high commission in New Delhi or wherever to get a transit visa just to be able to sit for one hour in a lounge at Auckland Airport, having come in on a plane that happens to stop in Auckland on its way to Niue, Cook Islands, or wherever it might be. It is just bureaucratic madness, really. There might be a very slight security ground for it, but I think we must have a balanced system of procedures and must not exaggerate threats. So the procedures for transit visas are creating a problem.

In respect of temporary visas, it is true that often people do not understand quite what a temporary visa is. But, that being said, I think that about 180,000 people are here on work visas, and only a smaller proportion of them are on work-to-residence visas. A lot of those people have their whole family with them. They have come over here to try to start a new life, and they think their skills are needed here. When they have employment they have a future ahead of them; then all of a sudden there is a bit of a recession, they get laid off, and—bang—they are kicked out.

I think the Government and the Minister should put in place systems to cater for the recession so that people can have extensions, particularly people who have been here for a while on work visas. That is another side of our compassion, and it has a practical use too, because when there is a bit of an upturn, all of a sudden we turn around and say: “We need these skilled people. Where are they? Oh, they’ve disappeared overseas; we kicked them out.” Working out ways to allow more skilled people to stay here is quite useful. Thank you.

I will follow up on the comment that David Bennett made, which flows on exactly from the point that Keith Locke was making. People are told to apply for temporary visas to come here to look for the job that they know will lead them to residence. They are told that in the London branch of Immigration New Zealand; they are told that in various offices around the world. David Bennett can shake his head all he likes; I know that people are told to do that. It is very simple for somebody who does not need to apply for a visa: they can come here for 3 months visa free and they can apply for an extension when they get here. A lot of people come to New Zealand on a temporary visa on their journey to residence, and it is a perfectly legitimate way to use the policy to get here.

The second thing is that there are people in this country at the moment who are working on a work-to-residence permit. If they are made redundant, they are given up to 3 months by Immigration, depending on which office they deal with. If they do not find an equivalent job—they have to get a job that meets the points they have claimed under their expression of interest—then basically they are told to go. That is the story that was on the front page of the Press. I tell this Chamber that that story on the front page of the Press cost us big time as far as skilled migrants coming to New Zealand from the UK is concerned. That is exactly the point that Keith Locked made.

When we hit a recession we have to have a mechanism for just seeing us through. Quite frankly, letting people who are on that direct route to residence have an open work permit until the recession is over would be a much better idea. They would not be able to apply for benefits, so if they could not find a way of looking after themselves in the meantime, they would go of their own accord. But they will not be front-page news because Immigration has told them they have to go. People have failed to cotton on to that point as far as this recession goes. We will need those skills again, yet we are telling those people that we will flick them even if they are on a route to residence. We will flick them if they do not meet the criteria after being made redundant in these circumstances. Jim Anderton and I have written to the Minister of Immigration about that point. We want to talk to him about it. I hope that he sees this as an opportunity to test the bona fides of what we want to do. We want to do it for our country. We think New Zealand’s reputation will be on the line if we continue to have those stories in our media. They are reported on the other side of the world instantaneously, as the Minister knows, and it is costing us big time reputationally.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 32 in the name of the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman to Part 3 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.