South African family waits on decision by minister

Gavin Penfold

Ministerial intervention is now the only thing that can save a South African family from deportation because of failing to notify authorities of a change in job.

Gavin Penfold last night told the Herald he has removed his children from school, and given up his job, while the family awaits the outcome of an appeal to Associate Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove.

The family will have to survive on savings until the application is considered.

"It's going to be a long weekend, but we will get there eventually, I hope," Mr Penfold said.

He also met border control staff yesterday, and was offered the opportunity, once again, to leave New Zealand voluntarily. He refused, but the matter was put on hold while the application was reviewed.

Mr Penfold arrived in New Zealand with his wife, Lorinda, and children Michene, 10, and Tristan, 5, in December 2004.

After working in Whangarei for about six weeks, Mr Penfold accepted a position with an Auckland car dealership.

But it was 10 months before he notified immigration officials of the change in his employment, and the Labour Department now considers Mr Penfold to have been working illegally, and has branded the family as overstayers.

He met Epsom MP Rodney Hide yesterday to formulate the appeal to Mr Cosgrove's office.

Mr Hide said he considered the Penfolds to be "exactly the sort of people we want in New Zealand" and he would be putting "a strong case to the minister" to allow the Penfolds to remain in the country.

He said the Penfold case highlighted the "upside down things" about New Zealand.

People who came to this country to "work and get ahead" received no help, but "we fall over backwards" for freeloading immigrants, he said.

"They cost the taxpayer a fortune."

The Labour Department said yesterday Mr Penfold had applied to vary his work permit in 2005 after admitting he had breached it. He appealed against the decision and applied twice for a new permit but had been turned down each time.


New Zealand their haven from violence

The Penfolds came to New Zealand from South Africa because they wanted to live in a country where the first reaction to a late-night telephone call was not "Who has been murdered?"

Crime, or the constant threat of it, was the main reason Gavin Penfold decided to move his family from their native Capetown to New Zealand.

"You live in constant fear that something is going to happen to your family", the 30-year-old father of two told the Herald yesterday.

A number of his relatives had been victims of violent crime, and he was once held hostage during a robbery.

Mr Penfold left a job as a sales manager for Rover, and his wife, Lorinda, had worked for the American Embassy in Pretoria before they moved to New Zealand in December 2004.

In New Zealand he no longer had to worry when his wife was "late home from the grocery store", and was happy to allow his children - Tristan, 5, and Michene, 10 - to walk home alone from school.

"We don't have that fear in us any more. When you hear a noise at night, it's probably something blowing on the roof, not someone trying to break in."

The safety of her children was the motivating factor behind a move to New Zealand for Mrs Penfold, as well.

She had had enough of a city where "you can't even let your kids walk to school".

Mrs Penfold said the looming threat of deportation worried her husband.

"He is very worried, he doesn't sleep.

"If it was a safer place to go back to, that would be different."

Mr Penfold yesterday lodged an appeal to the office of Associate Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove, in the hope of a gaining a reprieve from deportation.