Government Not So Colour-Blind
Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand
First Leader
21 March 2013
Government Not So Colour-Blind
New Zealand First says the Government is talking rubbish when it states that its immigration policies are colour-blind when in fact they are exceptionally favouring Chinese reunion parents.
Rt Hon Winston Peters says despite policy changes to rebalance the parent category, the Government refused to give assurances that the number of Chinese reunion parents will fall this year to a proportion more aligned with parent migrants from other countries.
“Parent category policy changes last year prioritise parents who bring in $500,000 resettlement money without considering the impact this could have on the Auckland housing bubble.
“The policy changes have also resulted in parent category applications dropping from the UK and India, but increasing from China.
“We will be scrutinising the statistics due out for the June 2012/2013 year.”
New Zealand First policy is to cap parent category migrants to 20 per cent of the skilled migrants from every country.
“This is fair because it allows all skilled migrants to have a fair chance of parent reunion,” says Mr Peters.
ENDS