Published by Admin on July 22nd, 2008 in Australia, New Zealand
Although Australia and New Zealand have always shared a close relationship and both counties have for sometime attracted each others nationals to both visit and live, a new situation regarding country hoppers has been noted.
In a spate of New Zealand newspaper articles, New Zealand’s revenue minister, Peter Dunne, has described his country as a giant transit lounge as many immigrants ended up moving to Australia after stopping off in NZ.
Mr Dunne told Wellington’s Dominion Post, that nearly 20 per cent of the 37,000 New Zealanders, who went to Australia last year, permanently or for a year, were born outside New Zealand.
He says “New Zealand provides back-door entry to Australia because it has less strict immigration criteria…Most of those who moved to Australia in 2007 after immigrating to New Zealand were born in South Africa, followed by India and then England.”
The question being asked by many New Zealand nationals however that is in light of these statistics should New Zealand tighten its immigration policies in order to prevent those destined for Australia from making strategic stop gaps?
Or is this actually a positive factor which the country needs to build on, as once in the country they can then do more to encourage such migrants to stay and contribute to New Zealand’s greater to the economy and work force.
Published by Admin on July 15th, 2008 in Australia, New Zealand, Visas
Sydney’s World Youth Day celebrations have been marred by the disappearance of 39 Indians who used the events as a scam to gain entrance through tourist visas.
Two hundred and twenty Indians travelled to New Zealand en route to the Australian religious pilgrimage, however just 181 left Auckland, New Zealand. This has sparked a man hunt in New Zealand for these potential illegal immigrants.
Of those men who have been contacted almost all have admitted their plans to remain in New Zealand. This has sparked fears at the number of those already in Australia who have the same idea.
However these missing men claim that they were promised New Zealand residency and were shocked to find they had received short-term visas, despite this they have no plans to leave.
No matter what the truth, it is a shame that such religious events have been affected by immigration and the rise of global illegal immigration.
“It appears World Youth Day has been used as an excuse and that is really quite alarming,” said New Zealand’s Catholic Church spokesperson, Lyndsay Freer.
And there is nothing that can really be done at the moment to those who did not attend the events as they have been granted entry for three months and are legal until this time period is up.
It seems that such scams are increasing in number; this hampers such get-togethers and puts the future of events like this in jeopardy.
Australia has strict visitor visa criteria that can be viewed on www.globalvisas.com, however with such events it is difficult to determine who is a genuine visitor for purposes of the event and who is using this as an illegal route to immigration.
The question is, how can they continue to hold World Youth Day or similar such events, when a minority continuously dupe the system? It is a sad reality but a valid fear.
