Mitchell Clayton: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1440. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak against this amendment bill the Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) but before I start things off I would like to wish you all a very warm and festive season for 2015. I am sure everybody is excited to be back in the House with their legs under the table as I am.We have given this bill some serious consideration and a lot of discussion and we think that what has been said today—albeit it in opposition—is on the right track by opposing this legislation. We feel that the bigger picture has not been really brought to the forefront of the minds of New Zealanders. I think what we need to really get across here is the importance of looking after New Zealand jobs for New Zealanders first and foremost. That is not saying that we do not have issues within our system currently. As recently as last year I personally was involved in a situation where we had immigrant workers in the lovely Bay of Plenty in Tauranga working on kiwifruit orchards. The issue came about because in fact the workers themselves were working for immigrants and they had been exploited to the worst possible level that I could ever imagine or hope to ever see.New Zealand First spoke up about this and got to the bottom of what was going on. The crux of the matter was that these people were brought out from Fiji. They had had to sell their cars. They had had to mortgage their small properties that they had in order to get enough money together to get an agency—which was of course based here in New Zealand—to force them over here to give them the world as far as First World wages accommodation and great working conditions are concerned. Of course when they arrived in this fabulous country the land of milk and honey none of that was there for them. They were left with no other choice. They were stranded in New Zealand. They had been here for 6 weeks and had earned themselves $160 working full-time on these orchards working for other immigrants who had themselves come out to New Zealand which I find absolutely disgusting. However these people had no choice. They were stuck in New Zealand and it was only by New Zealand First’s intervention that we actually got these people sent back home from New Zealand.We have to stop this but the cure is actually in the prevention and not in these actions not in this puffery and the fluffery that have been put forward here that this is going to be the cure. This is not going to be the panacea that will fix this immigration problem for our migrant workers. We have to have far more stringent controls on our borders. We have to do far more for the people of New Zealand. We have to look after our people first before we start looking at immigrant and migrant labour for all of the jobs. Currently as we will all be aware because it has been touched on earlier on today in several speeches that we have heard we have 138000 temporary migrant workers in this country. We have another 100000 people on student visas who have got extended rights to be able to work in this country taking away precious jobs from those Kiwis who need them the most. We are not against student visas. We are not against those people coming out to study in our country because that is good for our economy and that is good for our schools and our universities. But we are against the fact that these jobs are being soaked up and taken away from the people who are the most vulnerable unemployed workers whom we call our New Zealand citizens.We have got 54000 people on working holiday visas per annum coming through the country at the moment and there are yet another 143000 currently unemployed. These are unemployed people with zero hours of work and yet there are far more—estimated at some 230000 people—who have actually got only part-time work who are not considered to be unemployed in this country.We have got some serious issues and they go back some time. If I cast back to a story that was broken by TV3 in November of 2013 it was said here that “The Immigration Department is ‘a visa stamping factory’ trying desperately to make up for the number of Kiwis who are leaving parliament has been told.” Winston Peters spoke up and said that 20 percent of all of these visas that had been stamped had been reported to be unfairly stamped and under conditions that would not be usual. We are forcing people into this country and we should be spending more time more money and more effort on looking after our borders and tightening up those controls.As early as today in the Dominion Post we had an article written—and you will all be aware of that—about our local New Zealand workers whose jobs have been taken up by immigrant labour coming over from South Africa and India and taking up those media positions for the Cricket World Cup. This I cannot get my head around. If we are a nationalistic country looking for the best outcome for New Zealand we should be putting everything in our power into looking after these people who live in this country. I understand absolutely implicitly and I have sympathy for and understanding of the comments that have been made by Iain Lees-Galloway and by members of the Green Party this afternoon. They are vulnerable workers. There are vulnerable migrant workers out there who need our support and help but if we actually put resource and effort into the areas that need it the most then that is going to be more beneficial and that is at our borders.When I talk about the Bills Digest—I read through that this afternoon—we have got great words here like “Biometric information” “Exploitation of migrant workers” and cracking down on this and “Electronic notifications”. It goes on to talk in great length and detail about “Decisions made using absolute discretion” and about “Deportation where information fraudulent forged false misleading or concealed” can actually force these migrant labour workers out of our country. But there is only one line here—one line—that talks about border security. Security at our border is the most important thing. I have spent 25 years in hospitality and there is a saying that has gone around for many many years that if you can control your room by controlling the people who come into it you are not going to have the problems that you are going to have later on. That is by having good security measures at your front door to ensure that you have the right people doing the right thing. We oppose this bill. Thank you.