PRESS RELEASE – Kiwi Indian Community

05.09.2016

Indian community asking Government for a fair go for International students

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 multi-billion New Zealand International Education industry, says Kiwi Indian Community leader Sunny Kaushal.

“These Students are not asking for a residency or asylum in New Zealand. What they are asking is to let them complete their studies in New Zealand for what they had enrolled in and paid full fees. They are contributing to NZ economy. Let these students to complete their education as entitled by the visa granted to them after the scrutiny of documents in the first instance. They are here to study higher education; they are not criminals”.

The Indian community in New Zealand was expecting a better response and resolve from Minister Steven Joyce on this issue to stop the exploitation of international students, but asking them to leave the country in middle of their studies without refunding their fee is not fair. We New Zealanders are known globally to champion Human Rights and fairness.

“What we would like to see these students be given fairness, if the Government can soften rules to allow hundreds of Chinese students in July 2012 facing deportation on similar fraud in China and then over a thousand duped Filipino workers caught in an immigration scam be given amnesty to live in NZ, there is no reason why these students can't be allowed to complete their studies against the fees they paid in full.”

It was heartbreaking to listen the plight of affected students at the protest last Saturday in Mt Roskill, the concerned Government agencies appeared to be aware and it was stoppable. These students are currently in middle of their studies, invested heavily in their New Zealand study programs, but none of the MPs turned out to listen to the pleading international students at the protest.

These vulnerable students are the victims of a wide spread fraud, their overseas based agents used fake financial documents. Instead of putting all the blame on the students, the Government must review the modus operandi of its own agencies, their failure in supervising education providers, documents scrutiny and visa process. The Government must introduce a strong code of conduct for all stakeholders and take action against the nexus of fraudulent immigration agents and involved education providers.

“New Zealand is being marketed internationally for its world class education and our export education sector relies on this. We need to ensure a robust system is in place and that international students given a fair play for the country to succeed in achieving an ambitious goal of $5 billion by 2025,” Sunny Kaushal says.

(Sunny Kaushal is one of the senior activists and an active member in Kiwi Indian community. He was the Labour Party Candidate in General Election 2011 and 2014)

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