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If a migrant worker has lost his job, he should consider going home because Kiwi taxpayers cannot afford to keep them, says Foreign Minister Winston Peters.
The deputy prime minister said today that the government told foreigners at the start of the Covid-19 crisis that if their circumstances had changed dramatically, they should go home.
“And 50,000 did,” said Peters.
According to the official Cabinet advice published in the document dump on Friday, there are potentially 380,000 foreigners and migrant workers in New Zealand.
The council said “the repatriation of foreign nationals on such a scale is unlikely to be possible” and that they would have to take refuge in New Zealand.
Peters said Civil Defense had “done everything possible” to help them.
“But with that said, if you’re here without long-term legal authority or the right to be here, then perhaps you should go home.”
Peters said he would consider helping migrants pay to go home because it would cost “much less than having them here year after year” with the support of the New Zealand taxpayer.
“How many people do you think a population of just under five million could support in this crisis?
“When your destiny was in your own hands and you decided not to take that path, what do you think are the obligations of the people of New Zealand?”
When asked if the migrant workers were in New Zealand because we had invited them to work here, Peters said, “Well, they actually came of their own free will, we didn’t necessarily move them.”
Community Law Executive Director Sue Moroney is asking the government to use the Social Security Law to grant temporary emergency benefits to migrant workers.
Benefits would only be available while the Epidemic Notice was in effect and would help thousands of people now out of work “through no fault of their own,” Moroney said.
“When that gets up, then it is the time when they will be able to get home safely.”
Peters had assumed that the government would continue to support migrant workers beyond the crisis, Moroney said.
“That is not a human response to expect that the people trapped here will have no income.”
Moroney warned that a “humanitarian crisis” was looming, but the government did not know the magnitude of the problem because they had no data on how many migrant workers were out of work and not in the wage subsidy scheme.
The media asked Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today about a report in the Press Room that one family received two cans of baked beans, two cans of spaghetti, onions, potatoes, canned chickpeas, and rice, flour and sugar in small zip-lock bags and told to last two weeks.
The woman’s family lasted seven a day.
Ardern said his experience did not meet his expectations of the service.
She understood that a team on the ground was trying to contact that woman since her treatment also did not meet her expectations.
The Government has allocated $ 27 million to support NGOs and community services and another $ 30 million to strengthen food and welfare assistance from local authorities and Civil Defense Emergency Management Groups.
Ardern said that when someone applied for a job in New Zealand they needed to provide evidence that they could support themselves if need be, but Covid-19’s situation was extraordinary, so additional services had been strengthened.
But he did not say whether the government would consider allowing them access to a benefit under the Social Security Law.
On Monday, he denied that New Zealand First was blocking benefits for unemployed people without residence.
The Government seeks to temporarily amend the immigration law to make it more flexible following Covid-19.
The immigration amendment bill (response Covid-19) had its first reading last week and, if passed, would allow powers:
- Impose, vary or cancel the conditions for the classes of temporary entry visa holders
- Vary or cancel conditions for classes of resident class visa holders
- Extending visa expiration dates for classes of people
- Grant visas to individuals and classes of persons in the absence of an application
- Waive regulatory requirements for certain classes of application
- Waive the requirement to obtain a transit visa
- Suspend the ability to file visa applications or present expressions of interest to apply for visas by classes of people
- Revoke the entry permit of people arriving on private planes or marine vessels (to align them with people arriving on commercial flights, who may already be denied entry)
The Epidemic Response Committee listened to presentations by immigration experts and migrant worker employers on the bill last week.
Applicants broadly supported the bill, but most wanted to see additional safeguards to ensure that migrant workers were not deprived of their rights.
