Thank you, and good afternoon or good morning, as it is here. Kia ora koutou, which means “warm greetings” in the language of New Zealand's indigenous people.
Thank you for the lovely introduction.
As said, my name is Steve Watson, and I lead the part of New Zealand's immigration system that deals with removals and criminal prosecutions for criminal offending against New Zealand's immigration law, including migrant exploitation, human trafficking and people smuggling.
Today I want to talk to you about one aspect of my role that you've asked for information on, which is deportations and removals. Specifically, today I want to provide you with insight into how New Zealand manages foreign national offenders who are liable for removal.
New Zealand's deportation turnaround legislation and processes that apply to the removal of foreign national offenders are unique to our country, so they sometimes won't be aligned or it's not possible to do a linear comparison with Canada's processes, but hopefully I can give you some assistance.
We have a number of information-sharing processes with other government agencies, which I'll outline further in the presentation, that you may or may not have in your own jurisdiction. We have sharing agreements with agencies such as the New Zealand Police, our corrections or prison service and our Ministry of Justice.
I'm going to keep today's presentation reasonably high level, and I won't reference specific legislation or the details of those agreements, but I make the offer to you to talk further about this or provide any further information that you might require subsequent to this hearing.
The immigration compliance team is responsible for a range of immigration enforcement work. That includes managing returns cases and investigating visa breaches by migrants, employers and educational institutions that look after foreign students. We have a low-level compliance function that gives infringement notices or minor prosecutions to employers who breach the Immigration Act, and we monitor migrants in the community who are currently on active criminal charges or on reporting conditions. We also do a lot of joint work with other agencies in terms of the wider harm to New Zealand's communities.
New Zealand's immigration system, like many, is founded on the expectation that migrants must meet entry requirements. When they're here, they must comply with their visa conditions, be of good character and not commit criminal offences whilst here in our country. This includes a clear expectation that people leave New Zealand when they no longer hold a lawful basis to remain, so they must leave before the expiration of their visa.
New Zealand prioritizes the removal of foreign national offenders who are liable for deportation and also those migrants who present a high risk to our communities. Criminal offending is our number one priority.
I'll say little bit about the term “removals”. It describes all processes for requiring foreign nationals, who have no right to remain in New Zealand, to leave. There are three main streams of deportation. For residents who have committed serious offences, we can cancel their residence permission. Temporary visa holders such as students, visitors or workers who commit criminal offences will be made liable for deportation. Then there are persons who have overstayed or remained in New Zealand past the expiry of their visa.
All of these attract appeal rights, right through to a judicial review at our Supreme Court. Not everyone avails themselves of those appeal rights, but we do obviously have to respect that.
Most of our deportations are around criminal liability and are based on bad character.
We also have a role in the compliance team of turning around people at the border who've been deemed inadmissible because they have criminal convictions overseas and, if we find out about that upon arrival, we will detain them and turn them around.
We do have a graduated compliance model so our responses are proportionate to the harm, risk-based and tailored to the individual's circumstances. While some non-compliance is resolved through education, facilitation or voluntary departure, cases involving criminality, a bad carrot, or refusal to engage are treated by higher priority. Like in many countries around the world, there is high public interest in New Zealand in migrant offending.
In terms of custody and detention, most of our low-priority cases are resolved through community-based limits on movements, such as reporting conditions. We have recently passed legislation where we can do electronic monitoring for some criminal offenders in the community. For our serious cases, we make every effort to deport directly from prison or immediately following the court hearing.
In terms of detention, we have a limited four-hour power of detention immediately after arrest of a foreign national who's liable for deportation. We then take them to a police station where a decision is made. We have 96 hours to decide whether to detain them on a warrant of commitment, which is sought through the court, or whether to release them on conditions. The 96 hours also allows us time to book travel, where appropriate, to remove people from the country.
In terms of information sharing, all foreign nationals who are under investigation by the police, are charged with a criminal offence or have been convicted by the court are of interest to Immigration New Zealand for the reasons I've outlined. We expect visitors to our country to obey the law the same as we do for our own people. We and the police have a data-matching system. It has some problems, mostly around identity. We do have to validate some identity. It's just a straight name-to-name match, so we do have to do a little bit of work to validate that. The police will tell us of all foreign nationals they're aware of who are charged with criminal offences or have been sentenced to imprisonment. It captures most foreign national offenders who commit serious offences.
Where a person is on a community-based sentence, or is not sentenced to a term of imprisonment, we work very closely with our corrections and probation service so that we can deport them at the earliest opportunity. This means that as soon as they have served the minimum part of their sentence in New Zealand, we would put them on a plane and return them home.
I'll quickly run through our priorities. Priority one is prison releases, criminal offenders and national security matters. There are four subcategories under priority one: those who threaten national security, which is a joint piece of work we do with our security agencies; people who have been granted residence but who have committed a serious enough offence to make them liable for deportation; prison releases and home detention sentences; and people who've committed visa fraud.
Our second priority is a tier down from that. It's around people whose offending shows that they have adverse character issues. It may be minor assaults, street violence or a drunken charge. That's just a small snapshot of the offending where people are not sentenced to imprisonment, but they demonstrate poor character sufficient that we would want to revoke their visas and deport them from New Zealand.
That concludes my opening introduction. I would be really happy to take questions from members.
