KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark says the Government is not considering any special dispensation for Zimbabweans seeking refuge in New Zealand, but will exercise "discretion" in individual cases.
A spokesman said yesterday that no changes to immigration policies relating to Zimbabwe were being considered "at this point", despite the apparent collapse of the Zimbabwean economy and law and order.
The Government abolished visa-free entry for short-term visitors from Zimbabwe in 2003, although visitors from South Africa and 54 other countries remain visa-free.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who is now Foreign Minister, said at the time that New Zealand was still too open to Zimbabweans, citing the 2500 migrants from there who had settled here by that year.
"We've got to be the world's softest touch if 2500 people just come steaming in and can stay here," he said then.
Numbers of immigrants born in Zimbabwe have increased further since then, from 2886 in the 2001 Census to 8151 in 2006.
Beverly Harley, a Wellington woman who applied last August to bring her 64-year-old father from Zimbabwe, said she had run into a "brick wall" because immigration officials insisted that the family's "centre of gravity" was still over there.
The policy allows an adult child to sponsor their parents from another country only if the number of the parents' children in New Zealand is equal to or more than the number in any other country, making New Zealand the family's "centre of gravity".
In Mrs Harley's case, she is the only child in New Zealand and she still has two brothers in Zimbabwe. But she said both brothers had been driven off farms by the Mugabe Government and were unable to support their father.
"The situation is so desperate," she said. "Although my father is employed, his monthly salary doesn't cover a week's groceries. We are supporting him from New Zealand by sending him money via the black market. Currently we pay all his household bills, power, telephone, rates, everything."
Mrs Harley, her Kiwi husband Blair and two young boys have recently sold their former five-bedroom home in Paraparaumu and bought a smaller house at Waikanae, further out of Wellington, because of the cost of supporting her father.
"We understand the policy very clearly and appreciate the need for such policies," she said. "Surely, however, `centre of gravity' encompasses not only physical location but also the ability and willingness of siblings [to support] a parent?"
However, a Labour Department spokeswoman said the policy made no allowance for family members' varying abilities to support their parents. "The Minister of Immigration has the power to make exceptions," she said.
The president of the Association of Migration and Investment, Richard Howard, said all applications from Zimbabweans for short-term visits and residence were now handled by the department's Wellington-based Immigration Profiling Group, adding several months to the processing time for most applications.
North Shore MP Wayne Mapp said Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove confirmed at a select committee meeting this week that Zimbabweans who reached New Zealand would not normally be deported back under present conditions.
Dr Mapp said the quid pro quo for that concession was that all applications for even short-term visits from Zimbabweans were scrutinised more than others. He supported that policy.
He said he had had many immigration cases from black and white Zimbabweans and found that Associate Immigration Minister Shane Jones was willing to make exceptions in practice on humanitarian grounds.
Helen Clark's spokesman pointed to Mr Jones' decision this week to give a three-month visitors permit extension to an elderly couple from Zimbabwe visiting their son's family on the North Shore.
"Discretion will be shown as in the case of the North Shore couple recently," the spokesman said.
Mr and Mrs Harley met local MP Darren Hughes yesterday and said he had agreed to ask Mr Jones to make an exception for Mrs Harley's father.
