Stanford said she \u201ctotally reject(s) that\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason this change came around was because of the Jaz brothers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been here for more than 10 years but have committed heinous crimes and I think any reasonable New Zealander would expect that if you don\u2019t abide by the laws of this country, that it is time to leave.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I know there are some commentators saying it\u2019s a \u2018Trojan horse\u2019 or something else \u2013 they could not be further from the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the country had \u201cthe softest touch\u201d and the changes would bring New Zealand in line with comparable countries.<\/p>\n
Danny (left) and Roberto Jaz were convicted in 2023 of drugging and violating more than 20 women at Mama Hooch. Photo \/ George Heard<\/p>\n
Stanford said while citizenship couldn\u2019t be rescinded under normal circumstances, there were many people who held dual residency.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you hold residency we are perfectly within our right to remove that if you have committed a crime within a certain time of being in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are extending that time out and saying it is a privilege to live in this country and you must abide by our laws.\u201d<\/p>\n
McClymont said the changes weren\u2019t a crackdown on criminals and the \u201cdevil was in the detail\u201d.<\/p>\n
The announcement has coincided with a debate in Australia about deporting a New Zealand-born leader of a white supremacist group who has Australian citizenship, and comes alongside statistics released on Thursday estimating there are 20,980 visa overstayers in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe minister would like us to believe that this is all about making it easier to deport criminals \u2013 and that\u2019s exactly the way the media has reported it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut really that\u2019s bit of a Trojan horse because Immigration New Zealand already have these powers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis idea that you can deport someone for a criminal offence who\u2019s been here less than 20 years is disingenuous because most people who become residents become citizens after five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the devil is really in the detail.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not really about deporting criminals, it\u2019s about deporting people who have committed other minor immigration infringements and who are being blamed and punished and then deported for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noting the current debate in Australia, McClymont said it wasn\u2019t possible to deport a citizen or someone with dual citizenship in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
He said the language around expanding the definition of when a visa was granted in error was confusing, and he was concerned that people with jobs, family and community connections in New Zealand could be deported.<\/p>\n
The proposed law changes were introducing legislation \u201cby stealth\u201d that would enable the deportation of people for \u201csimple immigration administrative mistakes, for example\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
McClymont dismissed the number of overstayers as negligible and said while increased penalties for migrant exploitation were a good move, he wanted to see greater scrutiny of immigration policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere is the examination of how the immigration policy enables the exploitation in the first place \u2013 how agents and employers can sell vast numbers of job tokens offshore to con vulnerable migrants into paying for these jobs \u2013 where is that?\u201d<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stanford said she \u201ctotally reject(s) that\u201d. \u201cThe reason this change came around was because of the Jaz brothers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4500,5033,5031,5036,5035,1304,111,43,139,69,5037,1560,5034,312,5032,61],"class_list":["post-3439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-changes","tag-deportation","tag-erica","tag-hooch","tag-mama","tag-morning","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rapists","tag-report","tag-response","tag-says","tag-stanford","tag-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}