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Monday, February 04, 2013

Second class citizens

Oh, brother... NZ Herald:--New Zealanders living temporarily in Australia could have to wait almost a decade to get residency under proposed changes, according to reports.
According to internal Australian immigration documents which have been presented to cabinet, Kiwis living in Australia could gain permanent residency after "eight years or more", Fairfax Media reports.
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The main reason Australia is tightening up and unravelling the reciprocal arrangements is because of the massive outflow of NZers to Aussie (a record 50k+ last year) and more particularly that many of them aren't even NZ citizens: they are just immigrants with NZ residency papers. It is the high flow-through of these immigrants that upsets the Aussies and has ended our status over there. The residents use it as a backdoor entry to Australia and we aren't prepared to do anything at all about it and NZ citizens are paying the price.

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The spokesperson said New Zealanders were not discriminated against and had the same path to citizenship as anyone else applying.
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NZers are just any other foreigner now where once we were preferred - and that demotion is being labelled equality and non-discrimination! The crux point in this will be a court challenge on the basis it is against the Australian constitution to discriminate like that against NZers. NZ and Maori are specifically written into the Aussie constitution - that has to mean something.

2 Comments:

At 4/2/13 4:34 pm, Blogger Nitrium said...

Wouldn't it be much easier for them to simply change the law to exclude those NOT BORN in NZ or NZ permanent residents that have lived LESS than 8 years in NZ? I doubt that would breach their constitution either, and they still get exactly what they want without needlessly pissing off NZers.

 
At 4/2/13 5:42 pm, Blogger Barnsley Bill said...

Tim, residency papers for NZ do not allow you to live in OZ. You need to go through the citizenship process here first. It used to take two years. Now a bit longer I believe.

 

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