Many Pasifika families unfairly deported - immigration lawyer
An immigration lawyer says dozens of Pasifika families are unfairly deported from New Zealand each year after putting their trust in rogue advisers.
Transcript
An immigration lawyer says dozens of Pasifika families are unfairly deported from New Zealand each year after putting their trust in rogue advisers.
A Tongan family has won a last-ditch appeal to stay in the country, after a community leader mucked up their residence application.
The New Zealand Government's Immigration Advisers Authority admits unlicenced advisors are a problem, but the authority's been criticised for not doing enough to stop it.
Max Towle reports.
Viliami and Limiteti Talamai came to New Zealand in 2008 with their two young children, hoping for a better life. A year later when their visas expired, they asked a family friend at their Auckland church to help them apply for residency. But he was unlicensed, and made mistakes on their applications. The Talamai's were told to leave the country. I spoke to Mrs Talamai, whose words were translated by her sister, Lesieli.
LIMITETI TALAMAI: "They knew that he didn't have license but they just went and asked him for help because he is Tongan, and they can understand when they are communicating in their own culture. They are a bit confused."
After five years of appeals and pleas, finally this year, the Immigration and Protection Tribunal granted the Talamai's residency on humanitarian grounds. It was an emotional moment.
LIMITETI TALAMAI: "They cried, it was like celebrate. Once they found out they just sat there and prayed and cried just to thank God that he gave a door out to them to stay in New Zealand with their families. Sisters and parents and the children cried as well, they were all happy."
The tribunal found they were disadvantaged by their adviser, and said it was best for their children, elderly parents and a foster girl they look after, that they stay. But a hair's breadth - that's how close their lawyer, Richard Small, says they came to being kicked out of the country. And he says the Government must take some of the blame.
RICHARD SMALL: "They should have contacted the applicants, they should have returned the application to them which I believe they were capable of doing on one occasion. Because once people become unlawful they fall off the edge of a cliff."
He says each year, hundreds of mainly Pasifika families are putting their trust in the wrong people and it's costing them dearly. He estimates dozens are deported through no fault of their own.
RICHARD SMALL: "They don't know that they have in fact lost their residence as this family did through very unfair circumstances. It has been very difficult to get Immigration New Zealand to recognise immigration fraud and they have only done it absolutely reluctantly after years of struggle. Rather than looking across the Tasman we could start looking in the mirror here."
In a statement, the Immigration Advisers Authority says it is clamping down on the problem, and urges anyone receiving advice from someone who isn't licensed to contact them. As an example, on Friday it laid 10 charges against a Porirua man accused of the exact same thing. But Richard Small maintains people are still falling through the cracks. In the Talamai's case, their unlicenced adviser's name was all over their residency application. But, he says no one picked it up.
RICHARD SMALL: "The overstayers are the best citizens that we don't have. Most of these families that are here are driven to be here, nobody would choose to live underground for years. This family were a net plus for New Zealand, they were taking an at risk child in, reducing home care costs and I see this duplicated in hundreds of cases. And what do we have but immigration New Zealand sometimes seeming to act contrary to the interests of New Zealand Inc."
As for Mrs Talamai, she still defends the family friend who almost got her, her husband and her children deported. For Morning Report, Max Towle.
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