By Rachel Helyer Donaldson of rnz.co.nz
The Green Party says the visa barriers that prevent visitors from Pacific Island nations entering New Zealand are “unfair” – and a hangover of racism and the days of the dawn raids.
Green MP Teanu Tuiono. Photo: VNP/Louis Collins
Green Party spokesperson for Pacific Peoples Teanau Tuiono has launched a petition calling on the government to extend visa-free travel to visitors from Pacific Island nations.
Tuiono put the same request before the last Parliament under the Labour government, but to no avail.
He said Pacific people had been asking for visa-free travel for some time, and the issue came up as part of last year’s Samoan Citizenship Bill.
Aotearoa was part of “the family of Pacific nations”, and it should remove “unfair” barriers to entry for Pacific whānau, he said.
Visitors from 60 countries were currently able to access Aotearoa without a visa – “not a single one of those countries is a Pacific Island country”, he added.
“You have people here with long time roots, generational connections with the community and their relatives having to jump through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops, whilst you look at countries right on the other side of the world, they don’t have that problem. It’s unfair.”
It was also a “legacy of racism”, he added.
“We just need to look back to the time of the dawn raids, it was an incredibly prejudiced and painful part of history for Pacific peoples when people were targeted as overstayers but, when you look at the history, actually most of the overstayers were people from countries like the UK.”
Tuiono said Aotearoa New Zealand was a Pacific nation, as shown by this weekend’s Pasifika festival in Tāmaki Makaurau.
Extending visa-free travel to visitors from Pacific Island nations was also important given current geo political tensions in the region, he said.
“Aotearoa New Zealand is a Pacific nation and it should be nurturing its relationships with our Pacific neighbours.”
