Immigration exemptions - both sides

Is NZ the only country in the world where individual cases of immigration decisions that go against foreigners are litigated through the media?

Would a NZer in Korea go to the media - for example - if they were pregnant and visiting and complain that their desire to give birth in Korea is some sort of right they ought to have!? I don't think that would happen. But not here. It's normal practice to go off to the media (either directly or through a lawyer) to seek exemptions in this country. Astounding arrogance is it not? But their stories - no matter what they are (even if they bashed their wife, killed, have a health problem, conveniently converted religions etc.) - will always find a empathetic ear amongst journalists after an easy human drama piece and the hard left.

More hysteria from Idiot/Savant - who sounds like an anarchist - who thinks it is the right of anyone to come and live and breed in this country. That's what he's advocating if you think about what the counter-factual poses to his opposition to the immigration policy, and in conjunction with everything I can remember him ever having said on the issue of immigration. Today:

This is a simply medieval attitude, more reminiscent of the Taleban than our supposedly modern, liberal democracy. And the Minister should be ashamed for making it. We would not tolerate this discriminatory policy in our workplace, and we should not tolerate it in our immigration system.

Hysterical. Now I/S has read the Minister's statement and linked to it and quoted from it and does not dispute the facts as asserted by the Minister, so he must understand that this women enters the country in March as a visitor - which is what tourists get issued at the airport if they don't already have one) and then a few weeks later she wants to be a student and applies for a student visa. But she's pregnant and they say no.

That's an unfair and shameful and discriminatory decision apparently; but what does he think will happen if the Immigration Service says yes? Yes to all of these cases. Any tourist who comes here pregnant and wants to stay on to give birth...

They cleared up a great deal of the incentive for birthing holidays when they changed the law last term of parliament so that children born here to foreigners aren't automatically citizens. That move was opposed by the Greens I believe. There still exists, however, the very real problem (and anyone who scans the media will be aware) that through all the legal rigmarole (which has been/is being reduced) it is very difficult to get removed from NZ if you have a child here. Now even if that is no longer true it is the impression I have got from reading reports over the years that residency will follow.

It is a short-cut to residency, it is a short-circuit of the immigration system and everyone knows it... but the Minister isn't being straight.

This official explanation is half the story - the other half is what I said before about the elephant in the maternity room - once they get that NZ birth cert. they can't get rid of them - and that is why they have the policy.

The minister claims it's all about the money and the service strain - that's incidental. As my co-blogger deduced in an earlier post, they are not being honest about their reasons. They should be. The minister and his department should be honest about it because there is nothing wrong with having an immigration policy. What I/S and the harder left seem to want is a sort of ultra-lite immigration policy whose circumvention is even easier to arrange than the one we have at present.

There is a huge internal tension though. Such a type of "free" or open immigration seems at odds with the Green's low, sustainable population ideas and it will effect a colonial outcome of lessening the proportion of indigenous people even faster than what we have now. I don't want to misrepresent their positions on the matter as I'm sure they are far more nuanced than that; but they have to be realistic about what the incentives and outcomes will be if the system is loosened up.

Having Winston Peters and his bigoted NZ First Party out of the public discourse is a welcome first step towards examination of the immigration issue. It takes a lot of heat and anger out. The report into the Immigration Service (I haven't read it) is another step along the path. Departmental honesty about the reasons for the policies would be a good next step.