When visitors are not welcome

ILLEGAL immigration has long been the bane of New Zealand-Pacific Island relations.

Overstayers, able to remain in New Zealand for years by abusing a generous legal system which allows them up to 15 avenues of appeal against deportation, cause immense resent ment in this country. And periodic crackdowns by New Zealand authorities create equal resentment in the islands where such action is often perceived as discriminatory.

Now and again, amnesties have been declared in attempts to wipe the slate clean, but they never worked because they effectively rewarded those who broke the law and encouraged more immigrants to overstay their welcome in the expectation that they too would eventually be pardoned and allowed to remain.

As a result, the numbers grew until today there are about 20,000 overstayers that’s equal to the population of small New Zealand towns like Masterton and Levin, and the number is increasing by about 2000 a year.

They are not all from the Pacific Islands, but a fair proportion are about 7000 from Western Samoa, 5000 from Tonga and 1000 from Fiji. Many are relics of a misguided attempt by the former Labour government to demonstrate its even-handedness by abolishing the need for visas for visitors from those countries in December 1986. (There was such a flood of arrivals, many apparently misled by travel agents into believing they could settle here permanently, that the scheme was axed after 11 weeks. But in that time, 11,500 island people, including five per cent of Tonga’s population, flew in and a lot of them did not go home.) Well, having firmly ruled out any prospect of another amnesty, the New Zealand government is to have one last crack at solving a problem that has plagued successive administra tions for years. New immigration laws introduced into Parliament will radically streamline the elaborate appeal procedures, making it impossible for overstayers to spin out their stay year after year while the wheels of justice grind slowly round.

The key difference will be that once a visitor’s permit has expired lie or she will have to leave the country, even if applying for permanent residence.

A common ploy under the existing law is for overstayers to lodge an application for permanent residence, knowing they will be allowed to stay until the appeal procedures are exhausted. More than 7000 appeals a year pass over the Immigration Minister’s desk, most of them deliberate time gaining measures, as evidenced by the fact that only two-three per cent are successful.

Two new authorities, acting independently of the Immigra tion Service, will deal with appeals against deportation and against refusal of permanent residence.

The measures are controversial, in that they will deprive the appellants of the normal legal right to be present at a hearing, or even the right to have a hearing, for each authority will be a single individual who will decide every case in private. There will be a right of appeal to the High Court on questions of law, but it seems certain these provisions will be challenged in

Parliamentary select committee hearings.

Immigration Minister Bill Birch, who hopes his revamp of the immigration system will become law by the end of the year, makes no apologies for measures he says will drastically reduce the flood of overstayers who are a burden on New Zealand and often on their friends and relatives.

That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, it leaves open the question of how to deal with the current overstayers and herein lies a delicate task for New Zealand if it is to avoid more trouble with its Pacific Island neighbours.

Birch has been conciliatory, suggesting that

long-term ovrestayers with jobs and maybe

children born in New Zealand will be allowed to stay. He has urged them to come forward and argue their cases, promising they will be considered sensitively. But young, single, unem

ployed overstayers and, he says, that is the typical profile of Pacific Island people who are here illegally will have to go. That is probably at least half of the 13,000 or so island overstayers. That means 6000 to 7000 individuals to be deported. How the Immigration Service goes about this task is crucial.

There is no doubt that immigration officials have learned their lesson from the dawn raids debacle of 1976, where a heavy handed approach was largely due to the Immigration Minister and the Police Minister being the same man.

Birch, who combines the portfolio of Pacific Islands Affairs with Immigration, can be expected to be more sensitive and will presumably insist that his officials give overstayers from Britain, America, Canada, Taiwan and elsewhere the same treatment they afford to island people.

The Pacific Islands community in New Zealand could, of course, take matters into their own hands, and to some extent they do. Sources tell me that about one-in-three of all overstayers apprehended are found following tip-offs from friends and relatives - and that happens more among the Pacific Islands community than any other.

Samoan officials here have been urging their overstayers to stop living off their relatives and go home. It is, of course, divisive advice because others point out that they are only in New Zealand because there is no work for them at home.

It really comes down to legal observance and the presence of 7000 Western Samoan Ov'erstayers does not say much for their regard of the law. It also shows abuse of New Zealand’s special quota that allows the 1100 Western Samoa migrants entry each year a quota that will continue but has been nowhere near filled for a couple of years now.

And Tongan overstayers could reflect on their abuse of the family reunification scheme, which benefits them as much anybody and will also continue.

If there is any doubt about the correctness of the New Zealand government’s clampdown, given what it is doing to its own people in cutbacks in benefits, health and social welfare

care, contemplate the following.

It saved nearly S 5 million in four months when it stopped paying social welfare benefits to illegal immigrants. Most Kiwis don’t know whether to marvel most at the effrontery of lawbreakers who claimed those benefits or the stupidity of those who paid them. □

Wellington

David

Barber