Letter to the Minister

October 6, 2009 by Avalon
Filed under: NZIS & Immigration issues 

This is the letter I have personally written to the Immigration Minister. Im still working on a more standardised version for people to download, but in the meantime anyone who wants to can copy this and alter it as they see fit. I have no idea if it will do any good – but I had to try.

I sent it in via email as an attachment to:

j.coleman@ministers.govt.nz

Or it can be sent as a letter to:

Dr Jonathan Coleman
Freepost Parliament
P.O. Box 18 888
Wellington

Dear Dr Coleman,

I am writing to you regarding the recently enacted legislation about Immigration Advice – The Immigration Advisors Licensing Act 2007. This act is supposed to:

promote and protect the interests of consumers receiving immigration advice, and to enhance the reputation of New Zealand as a migration destination, by providing for the regulation of persons who give immigration advice

However the actually wording of the act, and the stance taken by the Immigration Advisors Authority, has been to take away the rights of migrants such as myself to offer support and advice to each other, and has severely damaged the reputation of New Zealand as a country where free speech is encouraged and allowed.

This law was meant to protect migrants to New Zealand from unscrupulous immigration agents, who charged ridiculous fees for often no more than filling in a form. It has failed to do that. All that has been accomplished so far is that there are only around 300 people in the world who can act as agents on behalf of the tens of thousands of migrants we want to attract to New Zealand. The law has also stifled and gagged the thousands of migrants who write blogs and post on support forums, or who even speak to each other inside and outside New Zealand.

None of us can answer questions about or express opinions based on our experience of INZ for fear of criminal charges being laid. How on earth does this protect anyone other than the 300 licensed agents?

Worse – there is absolutely no way that any of us who wish to continue writing about our immigration experiences, and help those coming after us, can get a licence under this act – because you have to have been working as an Immigration Agent and produce client files from paying clients in order to apply for the licence.

So even though we are not, never have been, and never will act as agents and charge for the help and support we give – the very fact that this is the case means we are facing criminal charges if we offer advice and help to others because we are barred from licensing. We are placed in a awful situation, and you are the only one who can help us.

I know of no other group of people in New Zealand who risk being branded as criminals for offering help, support and advice to other people going through the same situation.

The law also fails to protect migrants wishing to come here from receiving bad advice, because many of the people who are exempt from the law, such as MP’s and INZ staff continue to give out misleading and incorrect information. We ourselves have seen this first hand in trying to get help from our local MP, who gave us completely incorrect facts about the immigration process. We know of plenty of migrants who have been given the wrong information by INZ staff – often leading to them become overstayers through no fault of their own. The IALA will not address these issues, as the people at fault are exempt from the law.

I am asking you to review and change this law – if not scrap it completely. I understand fully that you were not responsible for it’s inception, but it does however fall to you as the Minister for Immigration to correct this injustice, and give the thousands of migrants coming to New Zealand every year their freedom of expression and right to free speech back. The law is badly written, and is being badly administered by the IAA. It removes the right enshrined in the Bill of Rights Act, which says I have the “freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form”. The IAA says I am no longer allowed to impart information if it relates to Immigration to New Zealand.

The IAA is supposed to be “responsible for the regulation of the immigration advice industry.” Migrants such as myself are clearly not part of the “immigration industry”, we are people who have often fought long and hard for the privilege of living here, and want the right to talk to other people going through the same issues. This is no different from the hundreds of thousands of support blogs and forums on any other issue. Yet the IAA has the legal power to shut us up and shut us down. This is completely unjust.

But because of the wording of the act, they are also responsible for those of us who are not in the industry, and have no intention of being in the industry. They are indeed stopping migrants answering questions from other migrants. All the IAA is able to say is that if we give “advice” we breach the act. The definition of advice is so woolly, that many of us are breaking this law, because we can be determined to be “giving advice systematically”. In one conversation with the IAA, it seems that by actually checking facts and doing some research before answering a question from another migrant – we can be deemed to be acting “systematically” and thus risk up to seven years in Jail. If we answer a question incorrectly, because we did not bother to check the truth, then we would not be deemed to be acting systematically, and we would not be breaching the act. How can this possibly be OK? And how does this protect Immigrants or the reputation of New Zealand?

Your government has, this week, said it will amend a law that makes it illegal to use a hands free mobile phone as a SatNav device, because the law did not make sense and it was not in the interests of the public. Please do the same for this law. It protects no one but the Immigration Agent Industry, and it makes it a crime to speak out about our experiences with Immigration New Zealand because we can be deemed to be “giving advice” if we fail to stick to nebulous and ill defined rules as to what constitutes advice.

Thank you very much for your time.

Helen Winterbottom

Author Avalon’s Guide Blog

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Related posts:

  1. Reply from the Minister.
  2. Immigration Advisers Licencing Act: Update 2 Responce from the minister
  3. What has been the effect of the Immigration Advisors Licensing Act.
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Comments

5 Comments on Letter to the Minister

  1. DOTTING THE “T’s” AND CROSSING THE “I’s” « LIFE UPSIDE DOWNUNDER on Tue, 6th Oct 2009 3:40 pm

    2. [...] migrants to copy/amend and send to the Minister of Immigration to change this law. Have a read of the letter here, and further explanation about the law (across a few blog posts) can be found here. I’ll be [...]

  2. Deborah on Wed, 7th Oct 2009 4:27 pm

    3. Done! I’ve sent my very own version to the freepost address you kindly gave.

    Fingers crossed!

    D X

  3. Deborah on Wed, 7th Oct 2009 4:40 pm

    4. Oh and it included this classic

    “As settled migrants we are unsung ambassadors for this country”

    ;)

  4. Avalon on Wed, 7th Oct 2009 5:10 pm

    5. WAY TO GO DEB :)

    And what a good line – wish Id thought of that one myself!

    Thank you so much for doing this – I appreciate it :)

    Hxxx

  5. THINGS I APPRECIATE AND GETTING POLITICAL « LIFE UPSIDE DOWNUNDER on Wed, 14th Oct 2009 11:44 am

    6. [...] has provided a letter to the Minister of Immigration on her blog, which you and I are welcome to make a copy of and send it, asking him to re-look at [...]

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