Colonial-era visitor rules haunt us still
Borders fail to heed the rich tapestry of Pacific history
There are invisible borders criss-crossing the ocean, carving up the Pacific. They determine who can go where and when and for how long; who gets New Zealand passports and who does not. Who needs a visa to work here and who does not. Who comes from a visa waiver country and who does not.
What these lines don’t do is acknowledge the rich tapestry of Pacific history that has been woven over centuries of interactions. Interactions that cannot be confined by lines and borders but share linguistic, ancestral, and cultural roots across the Pacific.
This month, 1 News reported that half of the visitor visa applications rejected by Immigration New Zealand are from people travelling to Aotearoa from the Pacific.
One of the reasons given is that people visiting from the Pacific do not meet the criteria of a “bona fide” visitor.
It seems the Dawn Raid-era perception of Pacific peoples as overstayers is alive and well in our visa rules. These colonial-era rules mean freedom of movement remains a privilege of the wealthy, while hundreds of Pacific people are prevented from seeing their families.
The Green Party wrote to the Minister of Immigration in June calling on the Government to improve visitor access from the Pacific.
With data now suggesting Pacific people are disproportionately prevented from visiting Aotearoa, the Government needs to immediately grant visa-waiver status to all Pacific countries.
In the wake of last year’s eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, for example, people had to wait far too long to get a visitor visa approved before they could be with their families.
That is just one example of where current visa rules bear little relation to the reasons why Pacific people visit Aotearoa — and what they need when they are here with whānau.
Manaakitanga means that when a loved one comes to visit us in Aotearoa, they do not need a whole lot of money to be here.
So, if this Government really believes what it says when it talks about Aotearoa New Zealand as part of a family of Pacific nations, it needs to update visa rules immediately to better reflect Pacific values.
People across the Pacific should be able to visit their families in Aotearoa regardless of their income and without having to jump through unnecessary procedural hoops to spend time with each other.