Clamp on absentee migrants' school ploy

By AUDREY YOUNG and PHILIP ENGLISH

The Government is cracking down on freeloading immigrants who leave their children in New Zealand to receive a near-free education while they live, work and pay taxes elsewhere.

Education Minister Trevor Mallard said a loophole would be closed and the parents would have to pay full education fees.

The biggest impact will be in Auckland, where many schools reportedly have students with absentee parents.

The families are believed to be mainly from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Korea.

The parents will be required to pay full fees: $4500 to $7000 for primary schools, $7000 to $13,000 for secondary schools and $10,000 to $30,000 for tertiary education.

This may be an incentive for absentee parents to stay in New Zealand longer, or a disincentive that might deter them from coming here at all.

Education institutions set the fees and will receive the money.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters welcomed what he called a "belated move to shut immigrant education loopholes".

"Welcome to the real world of immigration scams, Trevor Mallard," he said.

While no statistics exist on how big the problem is, Mr Mallard said there was evidence that the system was being abused.



"There is anecdotal evidence that people are coming to New Zealand and gaining permanent residence status, only to return to their country of origin, leaving their children in New Zealand for subsidised education - with the expectation that the children will also return to their country of origin."

That meant they were not contributing to New Zealand society or to the economy, "as is expected of permanent residents".

The Government will amend legislation before Parliament, the Tertiary Education Reform Bill, allowing the definition of "domestic student" to be changed by regulation.

Mr Mallard said further policy work would be required before it was decided how the definition would change and when the change would take effect.



"The resulting regulation might, for example, add a requirement to be a resident for tax purposes or a requirement based on returning residency."

Under present tax rules, permanent residents must pay tax in New Zealand if they live here for more than 183 days out of 12 months.

But they can leave the country for up to 325 days in any 12 months without jeopardising their permanent residency status.

Mr Peters said that while Labour and National were "sleeping", thousands of migrants gained residency to educate their children at the expense of New Zealand taxpayers, and then went home again.

They also received other benefits such as health services, but contributed little by way of taxes paid, said Mr Peters, who has maintained his anti-immigration campaign since the election.

"New Zealanders have been ripped off to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by these immigrants who come only to plunder and to leave nothing in return."

An Auckland defence lawyer involved with the Asian community, Graeme Newell, is worried about young immigrants living here unsupervised.

"There is no doubt young Asian immigrants are getting into trouble with the police."

Bali Haque, president of the Secondary Principals Association and principal of Rosehill College in Papakura, agreed that the loophole needed to be fixed.

He was concerned about the children of permanent residents living overseas possibly taking the place of New Zealand children in schools, the care of children left behind, and children getting a free education while their parents lived overseas.

But the students were entitled to an education like anybody else, Mr Haque said.

"The difficulty is the issue of care. If students are being deposited, left, with their parents disappearing ... there is a questionable issue there in terms of their care."

Further reading
Feature: Immigration