Moving on Middleton hypocrisy
Garth McVicar and David Seymour. You would struggle to find two men further apart in terms of ideology. So when both largely agree on the same subject, the other side of the argument is potentially on shaky ground.
That subject is murdered schoolgirl Karla Cardno’s stepfather, Mark Middleton, who has been ordered to leave the country by Immigration New Zealand.
Both the Sensible Sentencing Trust founder and ACT leader are outraged that Middleton, who arrived in New Zealand as a four-year-old and is now 60, is set to be kicked out.
If you’re thinking Middleton is to be sent packing because he was convicted and jailed for nine months in 2001 (later suspended) for threatening to kill his step-daughter’s killer, you’d be wrong.
Maybe immigration officials moved on Middleton because he’s become a burden to our society? Wrong again.
In fact, he was arrested at his workplace, teaching carpentry at Capital Training in Paraparaumu. So he was actually making a significant contribution towards this country, in both the exchange of skills and taxes.
Middleton’s greatest error appears to be faith in a system that has failed him at least once before, and tragically so.
His lawyer says he arrived in New Zealand from Britain in 1962 with four siblings as a pre-approved immigrant. Those siblings now have permanent residence, but Middleton doesn’t, which the lawyer puts down to bureaucratic bungling.
All this means that a man who has been in this country for 56 years, who has clearly contributed in a number of ways, is now regarded as an overstayer, one of thousands on Immigration NZ’s books.
Technically, no doubt, the agency is right. It usually is. But like the sports official who adjudicates to the letter of the law, Immigration NZ has demonstrated once more that it knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing.
And in doing so it has exposed an awful hypocrisy at the heart of our immigration debate.
Our politicians and other commentators rail constantly about the outrageous way Australia dumps its human waste on our shore. Those deported here have often spent most, if not practically all, of their lives across the Tasman but are then booted out for sometimes relatively minor indiscretions.
Similarly we are appalled that America could consider so heartlessly divorcing itself from the Dreamers, the babies and young children of illegal immigrants who have gone on to live faultless, fruitful lives, who have contributed so much to their adopted country but now face expulsion.
Middleton is a Kiwi Dreamer. He is no doubt one of many, but with a higher profile than most.
We’d like to think that the agency now reviewing his case, his future, could see the sense and compassion and look beyond the black and white, between the lines, into so many lives lived as exemplary Kiwis who have made a real contribution to their adopted nation.
And they could start with Mark Middleton.
It has exposed hypocrisy in our immigration debate.