Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader

Member of Parliament for Northland

4 NOVEMBER 2015

IMMIGRATION MINISTER SAYS VISA SCAM OKAY

Immigration scams are okay, the Minister of Immigration Michael Woodhouse has decided.

“The Minister’s decision to allow hundreds of Filipino dairy workers who gave incorrect information on their visa applications to stay is appalling,” says New Zealand First Leader and Member of Parliament for Northland Rt Hon Winston Peters.

“Simply put the Minister is rewarding those who rort the system.

“This makes New Zealand a soft touch, encourages further scams and penalises people who play by the rules. It is unfair.

“A Waikato-based Filipino woman allegedly at the centre of the scam proved how incompetent Immigration New Zealand is and this decision reinforces that.

“While it is easy to understand and have sympathy for people wanting a job in a Western country, and for farmers who have trained many of these workers, ultimately there should be no reward for breaking the rules.

“The Minister argues that these workers were ‘well settled’ and ‘making a significant contribution to their employers and their communities’, but this could be said about people New Zealand has deported in the past. This was a cowardly decision.

“A scam is a scam, and it makes a nonsense of the system when a Minister says they ‘admit to previously providing incorrect information’ but they are ‘compliant in all other respects to be eligible’.

“Under this National Government there were over 3000 complaints of immigration fraud between 2009 and 2013, and no doubt thousands have gone unreported. This will encourage more rule breaking.”

ENDS

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