Transcript
"I had to come back here to Auckland to work for them to make money to help my family and keep them warm and feed them."
That's the story of one quota person we will call "Malcolm" who came to New Zealand from Tonga with his wife and kids for a better life back in 2014.
His words have been re-voiced to protect his identity.
"Well I am working under the table but I don't want to get caught because I don’t want to lose my family. Like I want to work in a proper job. We just moved here from Tonga to New Zealand, but still we haven't sorted out everything."
Malcolm* has felt let down as he hasn't had much support to live here or any follow up to make sure he's doing OK.
It wasn't long after he'd arrived that his first employer in a smaller centre went bankrupt and he had to move to a big city to find another job, leaving his family behind.
His daughter has been in and out of hospital, and he tries to return to spend time with his family once a month.
Malcolm* has been heavily reliant for everything on family connections here in New Zealand to survive, but he knows of others who don't have anyone.
"Like we do all our own expenses. Like for a health certificate we paid $1000 and then we paid for our tickets. Then when we arrived in 2014 we stayed with a cousin for three months before I started working."
Malcolm is just one of half a million Pacific islanders who have bid for an annual 1,750 quota place on offer since the first one (Samoan) began in the 1960s.
Drawn by random ballot, the scheme allows up to 250 citizens of Tonga, 250 from Fiji, 75 citizens of Kiribati and 75 from Tuvalu to become residents.
For Samoans, their quota number is the highest at 1100.
The Labour MP for Mangere is Aupito William Sio who believes more support of these clients is needed.
“When you invite people to come here to Aotearoa New Zealand and you provide them with a process where they can come here to live permanently you want them to succeed. And therefore we have an obligation to the Pacific which is separate and distinct and different to the rest of the world, we have this obligation to ensure that when they do come that they succeed and that they don't end up on the scrap heap of unemployment or looking for unaffordable homes and therefore it becomes really important that our families looking to migrate here to NZ that they are well prepared.”
Morganan Morganan manages the Papatoetoe Budgeting and Family Services and says half of his clients are on the Pacific quota.
He migrated to NZ from Fiji 18 years ago and says Pacific people are always shocked to find out how difficult it is to live here.
“So they are struggling. They are struggling for advice and all the ways which they have never been and then it becomes a shock for them and this is how the families are in a shock situation. And it is really difficult for them to just battle around with this all coming up coming even which is unforeseen for them. They never thought while people are migrating to New Zealand what they are thinking is that NZ is a green pasture. But I tell you, it’s not.
Auckland University Associate professor of Development Studies, Yvonne Te Ruki-Rangi-O-Tangaroa Underhill-Sem has done significant research on development, gender and labour mobility in the region and says more could be done.
“You know the people that carry those quota people are the communities who are here. They are the ones who offer accommodation, they are the ones who give the leads into jobs and support those on the quota. I think a lot more needs to be done but from where I sit in terms of the different models of having Pacific people coming into our region, the quota model is a good one but it doesn't have the scaffolding around it to make sure that you get successful citizens coming out of it and not another bunch of Pacific people who are in the low skilled low cost labour sector.”
The next round of Pacific quotas will open for registrations in April 2018.
For more on this story, tune in for Sara's insight feature story on Sunday Morning with Wallace Chapman on RNZ National.
