slams shut NZ door on Pacific Islanders

Ruddock slams shut NZ door on Pacific Islanders

BY ALISON DELLIT

Thousands of New Zealand residents, many of them migrants from the
Pacific Islands, will be denied residency in Australia under changes to
the reciprocal relationship between New Zealand and Australia announced
by immigration minister Philip Ruddock on February 26.

The changes, originally proposed in mid-December, will force New Zealand
citizens to apply for permanent residency visas before they can access
social security benefits, apply for Australian citizenship or sponsor family
members to come to Australia. Previously, New Zealand citizens were automatically
eligible for social security benefits after they had been resident in Australia
for two years.

In a media kit explaining the changes Ruddock justified the tightening
on the basis of cutting Australia's welfare bill. He told the ABC's AM
program on September 26 that Australia could not afford the $800 million
a year currently paid to New Zealanders in Australia.

What Ruddock failed to mention was that the New Zealand government already
pays a fixed amount of compensation to Canberra for welfare payments made
to New Zealand residents in Australia. Ruddock has not requested that this
be increased to cover more of the bill.

New Zealanders in Australia have a much higher work force participation
rate than Australian born residents, and a lower unemployment rate. The
New Zealand Labour-Alliance coalition government has formally welcomed
the changes, presenting them as removing an “impediment” to good relations
between the two governments.

Far from being aimed at saving dollars, the changes are just another
attack by the Howard government on Third World immigration to Australia.

New Zealand's relatively generous immigration program has long been
a thorn in the side of Australian governments. In the 1960s, New Zealand
encouraged mass Pacific Islander migration as a cheap source of labour.
This led to a considerable Pacific Islander community in New Zealand, which
has made it difficult for the government to heavily restrict further immigration.

A public outcry in relation to attempts to restrict further Pacific
Islander migration in September last year forced the New Zealand government
to actually increase the Pacific Islander migrant numbers to just under
40,000 a year. In addition the government introduced an amnesty for illegal
residents with family in New Zealand. There are an estimated 22,000 “illegals”
in New Zealand, most of them Pacific Islanders.

These concessions drew a strong response from Ruddock at the time, who
openly demanded that the New Zealand government adopt the same criterion
for immigrants as Australia. Australia heavily weights English-language
skills and occupational qualifications in granting residency. Most of those
who qualify for skilled migration to Australia are British, West European
or (white) South African.

Migrants to New Zealand are eligible for citizenship after three years
of residency. All New Zealand citizens can live, work and study in Australia
without needing to apply for permanent residency. Following the disastrous
privatisation and tax regime introduced in the early 1990s, New Zealand's
unemployment rate skyrocketed. This has resulted in a dramatic jump in
the number of New Zealand citizens moving to Australia, which trebled between
1990 and 2000.

In an interview with 2GB radio “shock jock” Stan Zemanek on September
20, Ruddock agreed with Zemanek that the New Zealand amnesty would “open
the floodgates and encourage more illegal immigrants to head to New Zealand
and know it's just a jumping stone to Australia”. Ruddock told Zemanek
that this was ”one of the reasons we're going to ... see whether we need
to make any changes in relation to our law”.

It is not just Pacific Islanders that will be affected by the changes.
As the federal government has made it more and more difficult for refugees
to settle in Australia, New Zealand has taken an increasing number of Asian
refugees.

One of the few bodies to brand the welfare changes as racist was the
Auckland Refugee Council, which has pointed to a huge number of departures
from New Zealand of Sri Lankan refugees since October (when the possibility
of the changes was first discussed in the media). There is a much larger
Sri Lankan population in Australia than in New Zealand.

Asian migrants in Australia have often supported fellow Asian immigrants
moving from New Zealand during the two-year waiting period for social security
benefits.

The restriction on sponsoring family members to come to Australia will
hurt refugees in particular, who will no longer be able to bring out to
Australia family members left behind in their home country.

The changes are unlikely to have an effect on white New Zealand migration
to Australia. Applicants whose first language is English are still likely
to gain permanent residency in Australia, and access to all benefits. The
group which the scheme will disadvantage are those who have increasingly
few options, poor Third World migrants.

From GLW issue 439