Locke Keith: Appropriation (2009/10 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Locke Keith: Appropriation (2009/10 Estimates) Bill — Third Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
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KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 Last Sunday I spoke at a migrant forum at the New Zealand Diversity Forum in Wellington which was sponsored by the Human Rights Commission. I spoke alongside two colleagues Darien Fenton from the Labour Party and Jackie Blue from the National Party. There was a big crowd there particularly of migrant workers who are here on temporary visas. In the midst of the recession in New Zealand migrant workers are having a lot of problems with staying in the country when they lose their jobs. According to this morning’s  
New Zealand Herald 
 
38000 people are here on what are called work-tested temporary visas. They are skilled people. We need the people who come to our country to replace the skills we are short of. 
The Government has been under a lot of pressure because of stories in the newspaper about particularly hurtful situations of families of migrant workers here in New Zealand. The Government has conceded a bit. If people are working on a 90-day probationary period and are laid off in the middle of it they are given up to 3 months to get their affairs in order and leave the country. We were told at the forum that Immigration New Zealand will offer some assistance to people who are laid off and whose work visa expires. If those people talk to the Immigration Service nicely they do not necessarily have to get out of the country the next week. But this is a huge issue and I do not think the Government has taken full responsibility for it. 
Also in this morning’s  
New Zealand Herald  
the Minister of Immigration Dr Coleman is quoted as saying that migrant workers come here knowing that there is no automatic renewal of their work visa. Although that is technically correct I do not think it takes into account the real responsibility New Zealand has to migrant workers on two levels. One is the simple moral level of not hurting people who come to our country in good faith because they like New Zealand because it is a country they would like to settle down in and because a work visa is a way in. The second practical level is that instead of viewing such people as people whom we are helping by giving them a job we should view them as skilled people who are coming here because we need them. 
Why did New Zealand bring these people here? Why did New Zealand need them? There are two reasons. First there is quite a big outflow of New Zealanders migrating to Australia and beyond. Those New Zealanders are often very skilled people and we need to replace those skills with temporary workers. Secondly sometimes because of deficiencies in our system—when the apprenticeships schemes were run down in the 1990s in particular—there has been a shortage of skilled workers. We have had to replace them with migrant workers who then want to live here and become full New Zealand citizens. 
A lot of these people have uprooted themselves and their whole family from the other side of the world and at great cost to come here—sometimes spending all their life savings—and have a fairly good expectation that they can get work visas can work towards residence and be able to become full participants in our society in every sense. They are doing that to help us so we should feel the human tragedy of the people who have been laid off in the recession. We should not develop a first-class or second-class citizenship attitude that somehow we who have been here for a long time are the true New Zealanders and that migrants are just temporary workers so we can kick them out when there is a recession. Sometimes a racist element can creep in there as a lot of the people who are in this situation are non-European and are perhaps seen as having fewer rights. We should not have any of that; we should see everyone living in this country as being fully equal. 
What are some of the solutions that would take into account the real needs of those workers? One solution that was very strongly pressed for at the forum was the extension of their visas—say for a 12-month period—for a number of reasons. A solution is to allow them to find other employment and also just to help them. There is also a good practical reason for New Zealand to help them. After we have gone through a recession there is generally an upturn. There is talk already that perhaps an upturn has begun. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: Before the dinner break I was saying that it would be useful to give migrants here on work visas who are laid off because of the recession an extension on their work visas. I said that 12 months would be a good figure and it was what was pressed for at the migrant forum I attended last Sunday. This is also a practical measure for New Zealand because when there is an upturn we will need skilled labour. The construction industry will expand and we do not want to have to go through the hassle of recruiting people with the same skills from overseas when we could have kept people with those skills here. We could also look possibly in the interim at giving migrants openings in other jobs such as caregiving. There is a shortage of skilled caregivers in rest homes. We could give a little bit of retraining to keep them in the country so that they and their families do not suffer a huge disadvantage after they have packed up all their worldly goods to come out here only to then have to go back somewhere else. 
I also think it is important to treat the children of migrants well according to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and to not deny them anything because they happen to be the kids of migrant workers in a disadvantaged situation. We should give them proper health and education. In fact under the Immigration Bill which is currently before this Parliament schools will be able to take on without any cost all kids who are in compulsory education. That will be a step forward and it is one of the good things in that bill. 
In terms of support for new migrants and those on work visas the Government should also support not cut back the funding for courses teaching English as a second language that it has cut recently. We need proper support for migrants so that they can be fully part of and integrate into our society. 
With regard to the Immigration Service a catch-22 came up at the forum I spoke at. Workers go to employers and say that they want a job and employers say that as they will be on a work visa for only so long they will give them only a fixed-term contract if they get a work visa. Workers then go to New Zealand Immigration which says that because those workers are on only a fixed-term contract it will not give them a work visa. The Immigration Service has to take a better position. It has to look at the totality of the situation and give out work visas where there is a genuine commitment between the employer and the intending worker. 
The other issue that came up at the forum is a lot of professionals are still not getting the appropriate attention. Doctors are finding it hard to get jobs because of a more restrictive attitude towards registration from the Medical Council of New Zealand. Similarly nurses are suffering some problems because of restrictions by the Nurses Organisation affecting particularly Filipino nurses. Filipino workers predominated at the forum. 
On Monday I attended another event where I came across a number of other Filipino workers. They had predominated at the migrant forum I attended in Wellington on Sunday and they were also very strongly represented in the protest action taken by the employees of Telecom who are to be kicked out of their status as employees to become contractors. These Filipino workers these new migrant workers are the last to be able to afford to be moved under contractor status. This is effectively happening under Telecom even though it is being done through another organisation called Visionstream. In order to become contractors and do that essential repair work on the fixed lines so we can have a good service they have to fork out $20000 $30000 or $60000 to get trucks and tools and they are not even guaranteed to get 40 hours’ work a week because they will be contractors who can be given work at the whim of Visionstream rather than full-time employees of Telecom. They are suffering. 
Migrant workers in New Zealand have a lot of concerns during this recession and because of the way that companies like Telecom are acting. It is almost a crime that someone like Paul Reynolds gets $5 million a year including his bonuses while these workers who are fairly lowly paid as it is as full-time employees of Telecom are now to be given very little as contractors.