Rt Hon Winston Peters

New Zealand First Leader

Member of Parliament for Northland
1 JULY 2016
NZ Faces Thousands Of Indian Students Overstaying Visas

The government faces a disaster with thousands of Indian students likely to go underground and overstay, says New Zealand First.

“National has landed this on the country by loosening visa rules and pandering to an education industry hungry to profit off the back of fee paying foreign students,” says New Zealand First Leader and Northland MP Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“They will have to deport students on documents falsified by corrupt agents but the students will hide to avoid being sent home.

“An attempt now by the government to reduce visa corruption by forcing NZ private training establishments (PTEs) to take more care with dodgy recruitment agents is too weak and too late.

“A steep rise in immigration, most recently from India, has occurred since the National government opened up the right to work for foreign students in 2013.

“There are 124,000 foreign students in New Zealand.

“Loosening our work rules enabled many students to take out huge loans in their home countries dependent on repayments from wages earned in New Zealand.

“They cannot return home to repay loans and will go underground, providing more cheap black market labour for unscrupulous employers who are already exploiting foreign students.

“The government created this human disaster in their rush to boost the international student industry.

“Minister of Tertiary Education and Economic Development Steven Joyce admitted this is exactly what happened in Australia, Canada, US, UK, which begs the question, why did this government choose to ignore the offshore examples of document fraud, and allow it to happen to this country?”

ENDS

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