A group of community leaders, representing South Asian countries, will soon be meeting the Immigration New Zealand officials and higher management to take up their immigration concerns with them.
This comes after the leaders met the Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway and the Minister of Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa late last month. The ministers were presented with a memorandum highlighting the concerns of the communities, in view of the recent changes in immigration settings as regards to partnership and parent visa categories. It also included some recommendations such as:
Setting up of a consultation group representing South Asian countries;
Cultural reports to be made mandatory requirements and consideration for the immigration officers (supporting judicial framework and case law submitted);
INZ Officers discretionary powers to be structured and transparent. Under the fairness principle, full disclosure of the framework depicting the exercise of discretionary powers to be made public. This to address the inconsistencies in the decision-making process of the INZ’s quasi-judicial officers;
Parent Visa to be made subject to average income threshold or the medical insurance;
The Minister’s direction to INZ for reopening all the applications for student visa and partnership based temporary visas declined between Feb 2019 and Nov 2019;
INZ staff dealing with the South Asian countries to be trained on the cultural aspects of those countries and their arranged marriages traditions;
INZ management in Mumbai be replaced with experiences and trained staff and decision be made under the fairness principle rather than directed by the operational demands.
As reported earlier, several Kiwi-South Asian communities including from India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, formed a five-member action committee last month to take up their immigration concerns with the Central Government collectively.
Sunny Kaushal, spokesperson of the newly-formed committee, noted, “The ministers have assured that they will get back to us on our recommendations. The Immigration Minister particularly told us that he has directed INZ to report to him on a weekly basis, so that there are no, what he called, surprises – as had happened with changes in the settings of culturally-arranged partnership visas. Now, the next step for us is to meet the Immigration New Zealand (INZ) higher management to put forward our views to them as well, which will happen soon.”
-TIN Bureau