Earlier this month, Gill Bonnett, a prominent New Zealand immigration columnist, revealed in his op-ed that the New Zealand parents' reunion immigrant visa, which had been shelved by the New Zealand government, had been postponed again.
Gill Bonnett described it in his column as: Young new immigrant families and their overseas parents pay a heavy price every day!
Since the then National Government stopped and froze applications and processing for parent reunification in 2016 for electoral reasons (right-wing anti-immigrant forces believe that parents of new immigrants will become a burden on social welfare and health care), it has led to thousands of immigrant families in an endless desperate wait for the past six years.
The COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand in 2020 has given the Labour government a better excuse to shut down the Parent Reunification Immigration Scheme again (the New Child Sponsorship Parents Migration Scheme was previously proposed, and the child's salary is at least more than $104,000 a year to qualify for a parent).
As of August 2021, there were still 5,463 EOI applications submitted before the closure in 2016, stranded in the USCIS filing cabinet, affecting a total of 8,500 parents, with the earliest application dating back to 2012.
Some new immigrant families who have submitted applications have complained that the parents of the sponsorship application have passed away, and the application documents are still parked at the immigration office, regretting that they could not be reunited with their parents and accompany their last journey in life.
A medical worker working at the Bay of Plenty Regional Health Authority told reporters he had returned to the UK.
"I am the only child in the family and need to take care of my mother. I don't know when or if parent reunification immigration will reopen. I have lost trust in the New Zealand government and I cannot wait any longer. The New Zealand Government has had difficulty recruiting for the position I am currently working for. This would be very detrimental to the local community and not good for the services I had worked so hard to build during my time in Tauranga. ”
Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi said in a latest statement that new immigrant families are not allowed to make any sponsorship applications until a review is conducted. The USCIS's reconsideration plan is currently only vaguely planned to begin reconsideration in the second half of this year in the second half of 2022.
The closure of parent reunion immigration has a huge impact on the new immigrant families of our Chinese community, a large number of Chinese new immigrants are only children in the family, coupled with the epidemic after the pandemic, the travel visa is suspended and prohibited from entering, many Chinese new immigrant families have not seen their parents for up to 3 years.
The young families of new immigrants in The Chinese Community bitterly criticized the rigidity of the immigration bureau's policy, and did not consider the situation of the new immigrant families from the perspective of humanitarian care, even if the parents' tourist visas would not have the opportunity to apply until after October this year.