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An immigration advisor has accused Immigration New Zealand of discriminating against Indian students.
Arunima Dhingra says there has been a tightening up which has not been acknowledged.
- 14 per cent of Indian applicants for the employer-assisted work visa were rejected last year compared to 4 per cent for Chinese applicants.
- In the essential skills work visa category, 19 per cent of declines were for Indian applicants.
- Of those in the country unlawfully, 922 of 2541 Indian applicants were approved compared to 828 of 1232 Chinese applicants and 239 of 310 British immigrants.
Immigration New Zealand denies there has been any change.
“Every time we’ve asked immigration ‘what’s happening? Are you singling them out? Is there a different way of processing applications for Indian nationals?’ We’ve always had ‘no, it’s never that,'” said Dhingra.
Immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont says Immigration NZ’s “absolute discretion” in decision-making inevitably leads to racial discrimination.
He says Indian students in New Zealand are correctly identified as being vulnerable to exploitation.
But “Immigration NZ’s only solution to the problem of exploitation would appear to be to remove vulnerable students.”
And he says they are doing it by cutting corners on Indian applicants’ fundamental common law rights to have applications processed in a fair and just manner.
A year ago Immigration New Zealand introducing a new complaints process.
While decisions were previously able to be overturned in the complaint process, from May 2017 on this right was taken away.
At the same time, Immigration New Zealand began advising the minister that its strategy to clamp down on migrant exploitation was to target those migrants who are at risk of exploitation – to deport people who may become victims, rather than stop the exploitation itself.
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