New residency rules target bogus marriages

By PHIL TAYLOR

Immigration laws that come into effect today will make it much easier to refuse residence applications based on suspect marriages.

Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel said the rules would give the Immigration Service more scope to combat people seeking residency through sham relationships.

The amendments place the onus on couples to prove their marriage or de facto relationship is genuine. Previously it had been the responsibility of the Immigration Service to show a relationship was a sham.

Ms Dalziel said evidence of a genuine relationship might include joint bank statements, bills and letters written to them as a couple.

"Even when there has been a gut feeling that everything is not right, there has been nothing Immigration could do but defer residence for six months."

In other amendments:

* Minimum requirements have been introduced for marriages. The parties must be aged at least 18, or 16 where there is parental support for the relationship and it has the approval of the Family Court.

* Where a person gained residency by marrying a resident and that relationship then breaks up, the new resident cannot sponsor another spouse for five years and then will be limited to one spouse.

Ms Dalziel: "That prevents a situation we became aware of where people were buying a relationship in New Zealand and when they got residence they would bring in a partner."

* The sponsor of a partner who gains residence under Immigration's domestic violence provisions is banned from sponsoring again.

* Fiancee visas have been tightened to require the couple to marry within three months of the fiancee's arrival, instead of nine.

* Couples must have physically met before they apply for residency.

Ms Dalziel said this was mainly prompted by internet relationships.

"I've been in the job long enough now to get letters from the same person, first of all begging me to let the person into the country and then, a few years down the track, begging me to get rid of them because they were only using them to get residence," she said.

"That happens to both males and females.

"There are men who have come into the country who have married, fathered children and the day after they have got residence they have walked out the door. And there are women from all sorts of countries.

"Same thing - day after they get residence they are gone.

"What is left behind is not just the broken heart but the devastation of that person realising too late they were being used.

"I can't protect against that but we are going to be in a much better position to assess whether the relationship is genuine or stable."



Applicants could appeal against Immigration Service decisions to the Residence Review Board.

"There are sufficient safeguards, but there were insufficient protections in the current legislation," Ms Dalziel said.

Strengthening rules to revoke residency, where circumstances suggested that it was based on a bogus relationship, would be part of a review of the Immigration Act next year.

Ms Dalziel said people entering into partnerships to gain residency could face penalties of up to seven years in jail and a $100,000 fine.

During the year to June 30, 7253 were granted residence based on marriage or de facto relationships.

In all, 48,538 people were granted residence including 14,809 in the family-sponsored category, which includes marriage and de facto relationships.

The president of the Auckland Regional Ethnic Council, Ganges Singh, said the new laws were a step in the right direction to combating scam marriages.

But the Government needed to do more for communities with a culture of arranged marriages to allow their young people to come to New Zealand to find a partner.