A church in Auckland is offering sanctuary to nine Indian students whose visas were cancelled after the education agents they used were found to have submitted fraudulent documents in their applications. Meanwhile, community leaders are calling on Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse to intervene to stop the deportation of around 150 students caught up in the scandal.
Some 400 students had their visas rescinded last year, after an Immigration New Zealand investigation brought to light the widespread practice among some unscrupulous agencies of falsifying financial documents used in visa applications, resulting in a crackdown on student visas.
Many of these students had not yet travelled to New Zealand and some who were in the country have already returned home. Meanwhile, some 150 are set to be deported.
“We think these people are being used as scapegoats to make it look like the government is doing something about the problem”
In a vote held earlier this week, the board of Ponsonby’s Unitarian Church voted unanimously to let the students use its building as a “symbolic” gesture of support, according to its pastor, Clay Nelson.
“We think these people are being used as scapegoats to make it look like [the government is] doing something about the problem, when they’re not even touching the problem,” he commented.
The church has no power to prevent immigration officers from arresting the students. However, Nelson said: “Our hope is they won’t come knocking and that they’d rather not do that in front of the whole world watching.”
“There is not going to be any physical resistance put up. The students are not going to resist.”
The nine students’ appeals to the immigration minister for clemency were turned down last week, and they now face deportation.
Condemning Woodhouse’s decision not to intervene, Sunny Kaushal, a Kiwi Indian community leader, activist and former candidate for the opposition Labour Party, described the students as “victims of a widespread fraud”.
New Zealand’s Indian community has called for amnesty for the affected students, pointing to the government’s decision to stay the deportation of Chinese students caught up in a similar fraud scam in 2012.
“The government must reconsider its decision and revoke deporting orders for international Indian students from New Zealand to minimise the damage to the reputation of the multi-billion New Zealand international education industry,” commented Kaushal.
“I am calling upon prime minister Bill English and finance minister Steven Joyce to intervene and save our export education sector that relies on international students.”
