Transcript
Tere Carr is a Cook Islander. She is Kuki Airani Maori. She has ancestral links to the 'enua, the land, and its ownership.
Ms Carr says the Immigration Bill is the country's first serious review of issues around immigration and border control since 1971-72.
"People have been drawn to some of the sections in the proposed act that they think will disadvantage Kuki Airani Maori people and so there has been a lot of debate about some of those sections in the proposed legislation."
Ms Carr says with the exodus of people to New Zealand and beyond, migrant workers have filled the void, but this has stirred fear among indigenous Cook Islanders about being outnumbered.
She says people are cognisant of what's happened to others in Fiji, French Polynesia and Hawaii and are feeling threatened.
Meanwhile, the Immigration Bill would grow the maximum number of non-Cook Islanders allowed to become Permanent Residents above the current cap of 650.
"The new bill is looking at expanding that number by taking away certain people from it. Those foreigners who are married to Cook Island Maori, they are intended to be removed from that number. There are other classes of people that our government is looking at removing from that number."
Ms Carr is calling on the Aronga Mana, the traditional leaders, to take a stronger stand on the issue.
The president of the Koutu Nui council of sub-chiefs, Terea Mataiapo Paul Allsworth, says the bill is one of the most important of this era especially about who is Cook Islander.
"And also the rights and privileges of a Permanent Resident. There are some clauses in the bill that we're not happy about. For example, the absolute discretion for the minister to approve PR's and also the principal immigration officer getting absolute discretion."
Terea Mataiapo says the minister and immigration officer should both seek advice and recommendations from a traditional committee mechanism before granting a foreigner PR or Permanent Resident status.
He says the Koutu Nui is also concerned about children of Permanent Residents born in the Cook Islands not requiring PR status which would allow further incremental increases of Permanent Residents beyond the 650 limit.
Then there's the issue of who is a Cook Islander, currently defined in vague terms as a native Polynesian by the 1915 Cook Islands Act, which was shaped by Pakeha in New Zealand.
Terea Mataiapo says the Koutu Nui would like to see a more specific interpretation clarified in law.
"A person who has direct heritage, genealogy and blood rights to the Cook Islands or is an indigenous native of the Cook Islands through his or her great-grandparents."
Stephen Lyon has been a Permanent Resident for over 15 years.
A former president of the Cook Islands Chamber of Commerce and current chair of the Pacific Islands Private Sector Organisation, he says defining who is a Cook Islander is for the indigenous population to decide.
However, Mr Lyon is concerned for the rights of children of foreign nationals who grow up in the Cook Islands.
"There are examples where children have been born in the Cook Islands, lived their whole life in the Cook Islands, their parents are permanent residents but they are not. And they do not get Permanent Residency automatically. Once they turn 18, they have to get a work permit or have to apply for a resident's visa like anybody else and sometimes they're declined that."
He says it's disheartening to be alienated by the only country you call home.
"It's caused some stress for families which have been through this and it will happen more and more in the future because we've had a large sort of growing migrant population for our work force over the past sort of ten years and they have a lot of young kids and they're going to grow up only knowing the Cook Islands but not having any right to remain there."
Mr Lyon's wife is Cook Island Maori so their children are secure and he will no longer need PR status if the bill passes in its current form.
But he adds that any suspicions that Permanent Residents are influencing law changes to access indigenous rights to land ownership are unfounded.
Meanwhile, the Koutu Nui will make a written submission to the select committee and call for more time for consultations to be taken out to the Pa Enua or outer islands so the implications of the law can be understood.
With consultations for the Immigration Bill 2020 finished on Rarotonga, the select committee is scheduled to next take it to Aitutaki, with its high proportion of migrant workers, and then to Manihiki in the northern group, before being tabled in parliament in late September.
