“This Government is happy to rush through bad laws under urgency but when it comes to something as important as split families and livelihoods it moves at snail like pace,” says ACT’s Immigration spokesperson Dr James McDowall....
“This Government is happy to rush through bad laws under urgency but when it comes to something as important as split families and livelihoods it moves at snail like pace,” says ACT’s Immigration spokesperson Dr James McDowall.
“In Parliament today Kris Faafoi couldn’t answer why it has taken him 18-months to provide skilled migrants with any sort of certainty.
“He even said that the Government would now take a ‘proactive approach’ so waiting times would not be a long as they used to be.
"He said he'd achieve an '80 per cent of applications in one year' target. The questions are, why didn’t they take a proactive approach before, and what’s changed now?
“Faafoi was quick to blame border closures for forcing migrants to make the hard decisions to leave New Zealand but seems to have forgotten that he’s the Minister in charge of making the rules for Immigration.
“The Government was quick to change dozens of laws with little notice and urgent legislation. But with immigration it took 18-months and skilled migrants like doctors and nurses leaving the country to get government to finally realise it needed to act.”