Locke Keith: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6765] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I have an amendment to Part 6. It seeks to omit clause 152 “Deportation liability of persons threatening security”. That is a very short clause but the key point is in subclause (1): “Where the Minister certifies that a person constitutes a threat or risk to security the Governor-General may by Order in Council order the deportation from New Zealand of that person.” That gives quite extreme powers to the Minister under the vague definition of a threat or a risk to security. This provision as expressed in the previous Immigration Act was applied to one person and it may be the person that the previous speaker was referring to a person by the name of Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali. 
I want to talk about his case because I think it shows the injustice of that clause in the old Act and the similar one in the new bill. This person was Yemeni but he went to school with one of the September 11 bombers and one of the September 11 bombers flatted with him in the United States. When the September 11 event took place he went directly to the FBI and voluntarily told the FBI everything about the situation. The American Government—he was married to an American woman—said he could stay in America. If he had been a danger to security he would have been kicked out of America but he was not. He was told he could stay in America. 
After some time in America he got so sick of the witch-hunt against Islamic people that he left voluntarily and went back to work in his parents’ business in Saudi Arabia. Then he decided to continue his flying lessons and he came out here. There was no prima facie case or any obvious case that he was a danger to the security of New Zealand but he was picked up under the provision existing in the previous Act and by Order in Council was kicked out of the country. He had no legal representation. 
When he arrived back in Saudi Arabia where he had been living peacefully with his family and working in his family business he was thrown in jail. He was thrown in jail because he had been expelled from liberal New Zealand. It was considered that someone who was expelled from liberal New Zealand must be a danger. His family visited him in jail and now he is in the community and no danger to anyone in Saudi Arabia. That is his history and it can be checked; he is a real person he does live and the Government can check. The Government made completely the wrong decision in that case and that can be proven by facts. That is where this legislation is so bad. 
Interestingly enough this person’s name and picture were flashed on the news on Television New Zealand last night during a special item about biometric testing relating to this bill. It stated that somehow if we had had biometric testing Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali would have been picked up and would never have got into the country in the first place. That would have been an injustice too because he was not associated with September 11 and that is easily proven. His name ended up in the 9/11 commission report because all sorts of names were just chucked in that report but he was cleared. That case shows that we have to have a due process. We cannot have a Minister just throwing people out of the country willy-nilly. 
The other point I want to make is about an improvement brought in by the select committee under clause 168 which gives discretion to the Minister. Clause 168(1) states: “The Minister may in his or her absolute discretion reduce or remove altogether the period of prohibition on entry that would otherwise apply to a person under section 167(1).” It gives the Minister power of discretion. Often when a person is living illegally here and an MP is advocating on his or her behalf there is a certain justice in the person staying here. We want to remove the prohibition on entry. Thank you.