Barry Soper: Immigration NZ used by experts to do their own dirty work

COMMENT: Immigration New Zealand will be feeling short changed.

They're being used by the experts, the coalition Government, to do their own dirty work, giving the Beehive a bit of breathing space as allegations swirl around the handling of the residency given to a jailed, Czech drug smuggler.

They're the experts because this is how they always handle something that becomes too hot for them, they call for an investigation or for an inquiry.

Only this time they won't be paying consultants to get to the bottom of this extraordinary immigration case, they've handed the case back to immigration who've been given up to three weeks to come up with answers to questions that their Minister Iain Lees-Galloway either won't or can't address.

The leading question though is likely to remain unanswered, even when they reverse the decision to give Karel Sroubek residency which they most certainly will, which is why a prison inmate doing a long stretch was given highly sought after residency in this country.

The Minister's refused to give an explanation for it because he doesn't have to.

The best he could come up with, as he was quizzed while announcing the investigation, was that the Czech was given residency because that's what he had under a fake identity and if one wasn't issued in his correct name he could have got parole.

Now that simply doesn't make sense, his false pretence should have been enough to have him deported in the first place.

Many people have been kicked out of the country for much less and if he was he couldn't have gone on to fraternise with the underworld and to import five kilos of ecstasy.

So the investigation will look at two areas, his return to the Czech Republic where he feared for his life, successfully argued before a District Court Judge who went against a jury's guilty verdict because they didn't believe him.

And the second, the change of heart by his ex wife who initially supported him staying here but changed her mind after he allegedly threatened her from prison.

And that could be his undoing.

Phone calls from inmates are routinely recorded and depending on the level of the threat, charges could conceivably follow.

That would be enough to see him deported and give the Minister the out he so desperately now wants to reverse his decision to allow him to stay.

So he's now got the breathing space and fortunately for the infuriated and bewildered public, for once they won't have to wear the cost of a consultant.