Election 2023: Mixed reaction to overstayer amnesty announcement

Labour Party has announced that it will offer amnesty for overstayers who have been in the country for more than ten years.

The party has also promised that it will introduce the legislation alongside a new super-visa, which would allow parents and grandparents of migrants to make successive visits of between six months and five years.

Deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni says the Dawn Raids apology was a first step in this direction but it was decided that this policy was best introduced in a new government term.

"After the Dawn Raids apology it was something we started doing work on, [but] the most appropriate way to do this was [introducing] it through a party policy.

"But we've said we'll do it in the first 100 days, if we are re-elected and we've been very clear what it will look like and why we are doing it."

And she hopes it can gives families greater sense of security about their immigration status.

"We do have real concern for the young people in particular. I've met young people who don't even realise that that is the position them and their family are in."

But Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono says regularising visas should apply to all, not just overstayers who have lived in New Zealand for ten years, adding that there must also be safeguards in place to protect migrant workers from exploitative employers.

"This could have been done a couple of years ago, also, why ten years? What about people that are experiencing exploitation within eight years, five years or two years.

"Sometimes people fall out of their legal status out of no fault of their own - maybe your employer gets taken out by a climate-change fueled event like we saw with Cyclone Gabrielle."

In the co-hosted Pacific Media Network, Radio New Zealand Pacific issues election debate, ​National Party list candidate Fonoti Agnes Loheni says the decision to provide amnesty for overstayers is potentially rewarding lawbreakers.

"The apology was two years ago - and what happened to our Pacific people was discrimination, it was absolutely abhorrent," she says.

"[But] we're now in 2023 - and we have to look at how is this policy viewed for people who are going through the legal steps to become residents.

"We have to think about those who have gone through this process, and it may have taken them a bit of time and anguish but now there's an open channel if you've been overstaying."

While a Tongan community leader is criticising the timing of Labour's pledge to give an amnesty to overstayers if it's re-elected. Tongan Advisory Council chair Melino Maka says Labour are taking the loyalty of Pacific people for granted.

"It's way too late - they've been asleep at the wheel for three years. But now they say 'oh we better remember who's loyal to us' because Pacific people have always been so loyal to Labour. But is this the way to repay that loyalty? No."

However Polynesian Panther Tigilau Ness has welcomed this election promise, saying it will give an estimated 20,000 people a chance at living without fear for the first time.

"It's a good policy and I hope it extends further that just Pacific communities, because overstayers add more to the country than they take away from it."

To check out further analysis on this policy and the recent Pacific issues debate watch below or visit 531pi's Facebook page.