Photo: RNZ / Symone Tafuna'i
Public submissions on the Restoring Citizenship Removed By Citizenship Act Bill has now closed, with public hearings starting on Monday.
The bill will offer a pathway to New Zealand citizenship to a group of Samoans born between 1924 and 1949.
In 1982, a Samoan woman living in New Zealand named Falema'i Lesa challenged her deportation by taking her case to the Privy Council in the UK.
Lesa won her case and the Privy Council ruled that all Western Samoans born between 1924 and 1948 were British subjects and were therefore New Zealand citizens.
In response, the government at the time overturned this ruling.
Today, Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono's bill aims to restore the right of citizenship. The Governance and Administration Committee received about 24,500 submissions.
Former National Party MP, Anae Arthur Anae, who is lobbying for the bill spoke to Caleb Fotheringham and said around ten thousand of those submissions came from Samoa.
