This week's Aucklander has an article - good reading - by Joe Barratt, against the Immigration Bill-about-to-become-Act. It marvels that this appalling piece of legislation got this far without interest in it by the media.

Citizens Against Privatisation (CAP) doesn't appear to have circulated as a media release this submission we made last November against the Bill. But if we had, at best Scoop alone (which of course did take an interest in the Bill) would have published it. Consistent disinterest from other media is the norm, with rare exceptions. So no surprises there.

Ordinary cynicism-fatigue meant that CAP did not in fact make a verbal submission after this. Parliamentary support for this Bill has always been assured. It does represent the obscene wishes of our rulers.

Citizens Against Privatisation (CAP)
Submission Against the Immigration Bill
2 November 2007

We wish to make an oral submission on the Bill, as do others here, and that the Select Committee therefore should hold submission hearings in the largest city in NZ, Auckland, where also the largest number of those directly affected by this draconian Bill live.

As preamble to this submission, we adopt and support for your serious consideration:

1) pp2-7 of the Human Rights Foundation summary at the link below:

· Immigration Bill: Summary of issues, Human Rights Foundation, October 2007 - www.converge.org.nz/pma/hr031007.pdf

2) Analysis of the Bill by the Human Rights Commission, link below:

· Aspects of the Immigration Bill that raise human rights concerns, Human Rights Commission, September 2007 - www.hrc.co.nz/hrc_new/hrc/cms/files/documents/28-Sep-2007_15-52-13_MATTERS_RAISING_HUMAN_RIGHTS_CONCERNS_IN_THE_IMMIGRATION_BILL.doc

3) Statement by the Privacy Commissioner, Aug 9, 2007, link below:

· On the introduction of the Immigration Bill, Privacy Commissioner, 9 August 2007 - www.privacy.org.nz/library/introduction-of-the-immigration-bill

4) Article by Gordon Campbell: The New Immigration Bill And The Zaoui Case, at link below:

· The new Immigration Bill, Gordon Campbell, 9 August 2007 - www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0708/S00119.htm

ADDENDUM
7 November 2007

www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0711/S00103.htm
And then there were none… Amir Mohebbi free
Wednesday, 7 November 2007, 9:59 am

Press Release: Global Peace And Justice Auckland
GLOBALPEACE&JUSTICE AUCKLAND
Private Bag 68905, Newton,Auckland. www.gpja.org.nz
7 November 2007
Media Release:
And then there were none…
Amir Mohebbi free at last!!!!!!!! [and text of the media release]
--------------------------------------------------

Taking into account the above:

The year is 2007. Had I been born here, not 58 years ago, but after January 1st last year, Clauses or Sections (please make up yr minds which) 336 & 337 of your so-called Immigration Bill would have given me, and my four siblings, no rights to NZ citizenship as the children of newly immigrant parents - who both retained their UK citizenship through most of their long and productive lives in their happily adopted new home country.

Your Bill allows such children to be detained (locked up), beaten up (reasonably forcefully of course), and treated as stateless persons. Have you read it? Anti-smacking! give me a break!

Perhaps you could first of all do a headcount of your Select Committee, and then Parliament, and of all your extended families - and ascertain how many of you have any right to deprive today's new citizens - and their immigrant parents - of their rights, by being present, of birth and residency, which you've taken so for granted yourselves.

Tangata whenua comprise, what now? 12%? 15%? of the total population. The vast majority of 4 million people here are immigrants. Get down off your high horses, parliamentarians, and take a look at the appalling, draconian, brutally efficient and rigid piece of police state legislation you're about to rubberstamp.

Have you read Clause or S310? Publishing false information about this Act [sic - the drafter(s)' slip is showing] to either encourage or discourage immigrants - is a crime. The drafters' are guilty. You're guilty the moment you vote for it.

Today the item leading the radio news went:
"New Zealand spearheads abolition of the death penalty at the UN!"

That is such a sick lip-service joke. Aucklanders spent months demonstrating outside Mt Eden prison this year before securing the release of innocent Iranians jailed for years without charge or trial, scheduled to be deported to torture or death by you 'death penalty abolitionists'. One Iranian man nearly died on hunger strike for 55 days, before it forced his reprieve from your state, barely in time.

Refugees and asylum seekers, apart from those UNHCR pre-approved, must have to walk on water to arrive here at all, only to be confronted with your chillingly titled "determination officers", and to find out in the face of their little-Hitler-tyranny, that their own label is supposed to be the, savagely hypocritical, "protected persons".

Your state has turned this country, like many others, into a prison. You invite in only the better-off, rich and richer. You and our employers wail about their 'labour shortage", 'lack of skilled labour" - but you never did want to pay to train us workers, and you certainly wouldn't ever again. We are a cheap workforce, so cheap it doesn't pay to invest in better technology, to improve our 'productivity' - and you want to keep it this way.

That's what the prison country's all about - close the borders to ordinary workers and keep us down, keep us cheap. As much the reverse of the myth, as fisheries protecting the stock by catching only mature breeding-size fish. Ever heard of that? Ask any ordinary Maori.

Around us the Pacific Islands and Melanesia, and the rest of the world, form a water border to enforce your profits protection of us trapped inside, and our brothers and sisters impoverished outside in your export markets.

Varroa mites, paper wasps, alien mosquitos, fire ants, didymo, black widow spiders, painted apple moths, gum leaf skeletonisers - the list goes on - are more welcome here than humanity. They're a fact of nature and border deregulation, and free trade rules, right?

Draft your anti-immigration bills at them. Us ordinary people, just like your capitalist mates and their capital, know no borders, and value each other, more than the nationalities you try to divide us with.

Rose Hollins
for Citizens Against Privatisation
2.11.07

END