A candle light vigil in Auckland s Aotea Square protested the treatment migrant workers are receiving.
Thousands of people live in Aotearoa illegally, surviving in a shadow world of cash jobs, without benefits or healthcare. In part three of a series going inside the world of overstayers, National Correspondent Steve Kilgallon examines the argument for an amnesty. “If you are by the sea,” says Wang , a Chinese builder who has overstayed his visa and is living illegally in New Zealand, “you can step back if the tides are rising. But now it’s like someone is standing behind with a gun pointed to you, do you dare to step back?”
David White
Eason Diao is a 17-year-old New Zealand citizen, but both his parents are overstayers. His father died and his mother faces deportation.
Thousands of people live in Aotearoa illegally, surviving in a shadow world of cash jobs, without benefits or healthcare. In part two of a three-part series going inside the world of overstayers, National Correspondent Steve Kilgallon examines what keeps them here. A few days before Eason Diao’s 17th birthday, his father, a 62-year-old house painter named Chuanjin Diao, fell from a roof and died. Next month, on his 18th birthday, there’s a very real possibility Diao’s mother, Xianglan Hao, could be deported to her native China.