New immigration rules, apparently.
Saber Xie, 26, an accomplished pianist from China who lives in NZ on a skilled worker’s visa, has been told she must leave – even though she is expecting a baby with a New Zealand father.
Simple humanity seems to have got lost in transition.
Read the full story here.
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One does not normally call a private piano teacher an accomplished pianist.
Looks like the father has already sponsored two partners before …
New Zealand, like the USA, nowadays only desires wealthy immigrants who can pony up in excess of USD 500,000 and who can “prove” they are creating jobs, etc. In other words, global gentrification.
You are totally right.
I can’t speak for New Zealand, but that’s an absurdly inaccurate and uninformed characterization of U.S. immigration policy.
The United States has had a longstanding investor visa category, where if you bring in a $500,000 investment that creates X number of jobs, you can get a non-immigrant visa (and in some cases an immigrant visa).
Otherwise, immigration is based on family relationships (US citizens or permanent residents can petition spouses, children, parents, or siblings), or on employment. Yes, largely focused on skilled workers who supposedly can’t be found in the United States.
Despite the visibility of Trump’s in-laws seeming to be hawking visas to wealthy Chinese, nothing about US immigration law has changed lately.
Perhaps what New Zealand is trying to avoid is encouraging the birth tourism business seen in the United States. Wealthy Chinese come to the U.S. to have their babies, which are granted citizenship. The child can return to the United States later, and bring his/her parents over, under family reunification provisions.
As to the Trump in-laws, they are traveling a path well-worrn by Hillary Clinton’s brother and a key political friend: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/report-mcauliffe-asked-for-and-got-favors-at-homeland-security/2015/03/24/00f62514-d24e-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html?utm_term=.0c25769b267b
“birth tourism” isn’t necessary when one of the parents is a citizen of the toured country, as in this case,
The requirement is to earn at least NZ$49,000 on a skilled work visa, not arrive with half a mil (which is also NOT the case in the US). . That is not a high income in NZ as it may be in some other countries. I agree with others that they should have married if they want to be together in NZ – laws dont change without notice so they would have known this change would happen. NZ has a far more accepting attitude to immigrants than many others, eg Australia, which makes me think there is probably more to the story than meets the eye.
“she is expecting a baby with a New Zealand father”
To quote the immortal Beyoncé, “you should have put a ring on it”.
If father wanted mother to benefit from the immigration benefits of a married couple, he should’ve, would’ve, could’ve married her.
It’s not because you get yourself pregnant by a native that you get immigration rights. No country offers that right.
Yes, quite. And people have, as yet, still failed to realize – as in the case of the USA – that if you have tens of millions of people competing for the same work this automatically lowers wages. Ergo, American workers are competing with illegal immigrants and this is keeping wages historically low. What results is that the value of the workforce can be measured in what it is paid. Skills shortages and labor shortages cause wages to increase. If nobody is smart enough to join those dots when I guess they’ve got what’s currently tolerable. New Zealand doesn’t want this and they are to be congratulated.
Quite, Holly. When Corbyn’s putsch finally takes place, he’ll reopen the floodgates and the same thing will happen to wages here. Then the empty-headed millennials who voted him in will really have no money with which to drink away their trivial lives.
What’s trivial here is your penchant for trawling the Internet posting rubbish like this.
The prolific Jeff McDonald seems to be ‘partnering’ every woman in sight. That is the problem with Ms. Xie staying in the country. I guess neither heard about a marriage license.
The important thing is surely to think about the position in which this child is going to be placed. Whatever people may think about the behaviour of the parents, the child does not deserve to pay the price for that. It is clearly not acceptable for a child to be deprived of either his mother or his father because of immigration laws. Yes, it sounds like the father has been somewhat reckless in the past, and, yes, an obvious solution would have been for the parents to have married each other. But the child shouldn’t be punished for the mistakes of his parents by being forced to be separated from one of them.
You are naive beyond belief. The government doesn’t care about the status of this child. The father was ‘somewhat reckless?’ I had a good laugh at that. It’s obvious Mr. McDonald can’t support any of these children he created. He has never heard about condoms, it seems. Now someone will have to suffer because of the father’s stupidity.
I wouldn’t call it naive. I’d call it having humanity. And of course the New Zealand government should care about the child: he is going to be born a New Zealand citizen! Is there any evidence that this gentleman has fathered any previous children? I read that he had sponsored two previous partners to remain in New Zealand, but any evidence that he fathered children with them has passed me by.
I can only reiterate what I have already said: the child doesn’t deserve to suffer because his parents have been somewhat foolish. Indeed, at the time of the conception the law was different and they were not being foolish. But once the change in the law became apparent it would have been sensible for them to have got married as soon as possible, simply because this offers the best chance of the child being able to grow up with both parents. As has been set out already, the choice is stark: grow up in China without his father or in New Zealand without his mother. I don’t doubt New Zealand would be a better place for him to grow up than China, but that means that he will grow up never knowing his mother. It is not really any better for him to grow up in China never knowing his father. Blame the parents all you like, but this is an entirely innocent New Zealand citizen who does not deserve to start life being separated from one of his parents.
well hes got a baby so what if its a kiwi or not she is Asian and thats that in my books send her home with him to her birth place fair is fair ive had a guts full off hearing about immigrants in nz they all should just pack and leave nz alone it was really good nz 5 years ago but no there are to much people flooding in making life hard on us born kiwi new Zealanders the guy is a loser and thats that
We shouldn’t care if he sponsored two foreign partners in the past when in this case there is an actual child to be taken care of.
If you want to take him to court on the possibility of some previous scam I wouldn’t protest but you may find that foreign women took advantage of him and then got bored of their residency and left him or went back to their country even.
You may find that at his age he’s been round long enough to have a few serious relationships and perhaps he has even lived in Asia (or Auckland) where you guessed it most of the eligible women are …wait for it….foreign…or asian.
It’s our immigration philosophy that needs changing. If a regular marriage was actually required to sponsor a partner then he might have gone through women more slowly.
A temporary spouse visa which didn’t automatically lead to residency unless there was a child or 3 years gone by in marriage, might also discourage scams.
Or why not let every Kiwi choose a foreigner friend to come stay. Surely we would all end up doing a better job picking nice folks than the immigration service. Why can’t I marry several foreign women over a period of years for love when some greedy construction boss can bring in 20 or more just to keep his wages down,