Two Indian children, who are New Zealand citizens, face deportation to India because their parents are overstayers.
Six-year-old Keshav and seven-year-old Kamani Chumber were served with trespass orders after protesting in Parliament’s debating chamber about the Government’s decision to deport them with their parents to the slums of India, Immigration adviser Tuariki Delamere said.
Keshav and Kamani are New Zealand citizens but their parents are overstayers. Immigration New Zealand have ruled that the parents are to be deported.
The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal confirmed that the reality of such a decision is that the Government has decided to effect the deportation of New Zealand citizen children – in this case to the India and to an almost certain fate to grow up in the slums of India with limited or no access to adequate schooling or health care.
Mr Delamere said Keshav and Kamani were traumatised and went to Parliament because they wanted to know why Prime Minister John Key said his Government cared about the safety and welfare of children but in reality the Government was happy that they would grow up in poverty in an Indian slum – or alternatively the could be left behind in New Zealand effectively as orphans.
Balvir Kumar and Meena Kumari are the overstayer parents of the children. A third child Navisha (3 years) is not a NZ citizen.
About 10 days ago, Balvir was arrested and jailed. He is now out of jail on bail pending deportation of him, his wife and the children.
There are no legal avenues for them to pursue that offer any hope of their winning the right to live in New Zealand. The children (and the parents) are strongly supported by their school (St Matthews’s Primary) and their church (St Matthew’s Anglican).
They also have very strong community support, Mr Delamere said.
He said Balvir Kumar was an experienced and qualified electrician although he would need to sit the NZ examinations.
“The demands of the Christchurch earthquake mean New Zealand is facing severe shortages of carpenters and electricians,” Mr Delamere said.
“Given the impending shortages of tradesmen, it seems that we have a case of the Government ‘cutting off its nose to spite its face’.
“The parents are overstayers and in no way do I condone that,” said Mr Delamere, who is also a former Immigration Minister.
“They should have left. However, they didn’t and now we have the fates of 2 citizen children to deal with. The Supreme Court got it right in 2009.
“This is about balancing the interests and rights of INZ to deport the parents and the interests and rights of the children to live in NZ with Mum and Dad. The Supreme Court ruled that the children “win unless there is a public interest factor against the parents – such as they are criminals.
“Being an overstayer was not a public interest factor. Personally as a former Minister of Immigrations I do not understand how any NZ politician can take steps they know will result in NZ citizen children becoming effective orphans or sent to live in abject poverty in the third world,” Mr Delamere said.
“I have a huge amount of respect for John Key but I would have thought that someone who is himself the child of refugees would have a bit more sympathy towards NZ’s greatest assets – our children.”
No comment could be obtained from the Government last night.