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Kerre McIvor: Shutting the border to immigrants not the answer
(Photo / NZ Herald)
National has slammed the government s decision to lapse and refund 50,000 temporary visa applications.
Immigration spokesperson Erica Stanford says its further evidence this Government has no plan to reopen New Zealand up to the world post-vaccination and isn’t listening to the desperate calls from businesses for international labour. And Immigration lawyer, Alister McClymont says the government s decision has nothing to do with Covid, it s all about closing off New Zealand.
We ve talked until we re blue in the face about the desperate need for more workers to either have their visas extended or be granted entry so that businesses can survive.
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?”
The Government has allowed in many overseas critical workers while Kiwi families remain separated.
A Labour Party branch secretary is criticising his own party after seeing first-hand what New Zealand border controls are doing to foreigners in the country since before lockdown. Peter Barrett was recently re-elected as secretary of the Labour Party branch in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby and worked on Labour candidate Helen White’s 2020 campaign for Auckland Central. He was not about to switch allegiances but believed the Government – which he still mostly backed – was moving in a world of “absurdities” by removing the rights of some foreigners to work here when no New Zealanders could be found to fill jobs.