Allow students to stay - Little
Resolving the Indian student deportee controversy is a political not bureaucratic issue, Labour Party leader Andrew Little said yesterday.
Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse has ‘‘absolute discretion’’ to overrule immigration officials and permit the 150 students to stay, Little said.
The Indian students face imminent deportation because it was found their visa documents were fraudulently filled out by agents they paid to handle the paperwork in India.
Several are now taking ‘‘symbolic sanctuary’’ in the Unitarian Church in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby where Little met them.
‘‘I’m happy to go back to the [immigration] minister and prevail upon him to reconsider and give these guys a chance again,’’ Little said. ‘‘When it came to a ministerial decision about the students being responsible for what their agent had done, the minister made the wrong decision.’’ Last year Little saw some of the paperwork one student immigration agent filled in.
‘‘It was pretty clear what the agent had done, the agent went and changed the paperwork, the [students] have been told they’re responsible for that. This is the justification for them losing their visas and being deported.’’
Little ‘‘wouldn’t go’’ for a reform of the visa system at present but said the Government, education providers and immigration agents needed to ‘‘take responsibility’’ for providing a robust student visa system.
‘‘We have to have a system here where the tertiary institutions are licensing the agents. Tertiary institutions have got to provide some responsibility.
‘‘We’re quite happy to have the students here, quite happy to have their fees, then when something goes wrong with the agent they wash their hands of it.’’
– Fairfax NZ