The celebration of Migrant and Refugee Sunday in the Catholic Church has been a minority activity this year. The times do not favour it. It’s not that there are few migrants and refugees to bother about. The difficulty is that they are many and growing. Welcoming, not blaming People who are doing it hard, as Read more
Jason Rigon, a Filipino migrant and President of Club Filipino Tauranga Inc., is making significant strides in helping newcomers acclimatise to their new home in New Zealand. Volunteering makes the Tauranga migrant feel at home. Rigon (photographed with his family), who moved to Tauranga with his wife Joy and their three sons in 2017, has Read more
In a sharp rebuke to Pope Francis, former UK Conservative politician Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has suggested that the Vatican should accommodate migrants if the pontiff is so concerned about their plight. Speaking on GB News on August 28, Rees-Mogg delivered what has been described as a “withering put down” of the Pope’s recent comments on Read more
Pope Francis was visibly moved when on the way home from Marseille he was presented with a photograph of a young migrant child. Francis was in Marseille to address a Mediterranean forum on migration. The image was captured by Reuters photographer Yara Nardi who accompanied the Pope on his journey from Rome to Marseille. “As Read more
The recent Women’s Football World Cup, with its acting-out of the Enlightenment values of liberty, equality and fraternity, was a delightful patch of blue sky among more ominous dark clouds. The fires and floods in the Northern Hemisphere have emphasised the threat of climate change to people’s lives throughout the world. They foreshadow the future. Read more
The number of complaints about migrant exploitation have increased more than sixfold in the last five years. It comes as pressure mounts on the Government to remove the immigration rule that binds workers to one specific employer. A migrant worker Newshub spoke to was sold the Kiwi dream to be a chef. “He treat like Read more
Migrant arrivals to New Zealand have rebounded as the country reopened its borders, but still remain well below pre-Covid levels. Stats NZ said there was a provisional net migration gain of 15,800 people in 2022, compared to the net migration loss of 15,000 in 2021. However, it remained below pre-pandemic net migration gains, which averaged Read more
The pope’s visit to migrants and asylum seekers in Ħal Far has sparked outrage among many Facebook users who rejected his appeal for charity and overwhelmingly told him to take migrants back with him to the Vatican. During his two-day visit to Malta, the pontiff visited the Peace Lab in Ħal Far where he met Read more
Immigration lawyers and advocates in New Zealand are echoing similar concerns Pope Francis made during his recent trip to Cypris. In Cypris, Francis warned Europe of its indifference to migrants, saying migration issues are something society is getting used to. He went on to label the indifference “a grave disease for which there is no Read more
This week, Julianne Hickey, the Director of Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand, is attending a conference in Bangkok to discuss issues surrounding child protection, human trafficking and labour migration in Asia and Oceania. The conference focused on “The Future of Work,” is hosted by the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC), an organisation working in over 40 Read more