John MacDonald: What does kicking out overstayers actually achieve?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

What does kicking overstayers out of the country actually achieve?

With just under 21,000 overstayers in New Zealand, the Government is planning a crackdown. But the Green Party wants an amnesty. Reason being that most people living here without visas are what the Greens describe as being “active in their communities”. Plus, they’ve got families here.

Or, to put it another way, if someone overstays their welcome, they’re committing what people sometimes refer to as a “victimless crime”. And I think we need to ask ourselves what kicking overstayers out of the country actually achieves.

If all it does is give us an excuse to bang our chest and say to the world “don’t mess with us”, then is it really worth it? I’m starting to think that it isn’t and maybe this amnesty idea isn’t so bad after all.

It’s not new and it’s not just the Greens that have been pushing it. Just before the last election, Labour leader Chris Hipkins talked about bringing-in an amnesty for overstayers who had been living in New Zealand for more than 10 years.

But not everyone in Labour was keen on that. Andrew Little was Immigration Minister at the time, and he said: “We have to think about the signal that we’re giving to people if they think ‘oh gee, this is a government that just routinely gives amnesties. If we stick around long enough, we’ll be ok’.”

At the time I said that if we went ahead with this amnesty, we’d be telling the world that we are the people’s republic of pushovers.

I said that, nowhere else in the world would you find a country willing to turn such a blind eye to illegal immigrants.

But that was then and, two years on, my thinking is changing.

Because I think it’s very easy to be all anti-overstayer and anti-amnesty without asking the question: what’s in it for me if an overstayer is kicked out of the country?

When you think about it, the answer to that is “absolutely nothing”.

We might feel good because we’re putting these illegal aliens in their place. In their place and out of our place. But how does it make New Zealand a better country? Answer: it doesn’t.

As the Greens’ immigration spokesperson Ricardo Menendez March is saying today: "People without a visa need support. Most are active participants in our communities, have family here, and are also more vulnerable to exploitation."

He says overstayers should be treated with dignity and respect and be allowed to become residents instead of being put on the next plane out of here.

Different story, of course, if someone is here without a visa and commits a serious crime.

As for every other overstayer, why wouldn’t we let them live here legitimately? Because what’s in it for us if we kick them out?

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