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Summarised by Centrist
The government is moving to tighten refugee and deportation laws after revealing that current asylum claimants include a convicted murderer, sex offenders, and other serious criminals already convicted in New Zealand.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said Immigration New Zealand has “14 refugee claims from people who’ve been convicted of serious offences since arriving in New Zealand, including one person convicted of murder, five for serious drug offences, three for sexual offences, four for family violence, one for arson, and one for burglary with a weapon. And we still have to consider their refugee status.”
Proposed changes would allow officials to refuse refugee status to people with criminal records, while still granting protection if they would face danger on return. In other words, the bill tries to separate humanitarian protection from the wider benefits that come with refugee recognition, including access to residence visas.
Stanford said New Zealand had become “a huge soft touch in this country compared to everybody else” and argued the changes were about bringing New Zealand “in line” with other countries. She also pointed to the scale of the asylum backlog, saying there were “more than 4000 asylum claims on hand” and that “the vast majority of claims are not meritorious.”
One proposal would extend the period during which a residence visa holder can become liable for deportation after criminal offending from 10 years to 20 years.
Immigration lawyer Pooja Sundar rejected the idea that New Zealand had been lax, saying, “We are not a soft touch, we just used to give a crap about our international conventions.”
