Mass arrivals legislation would affect people claiming asylum after arriving by boat. File photo. Photo: Supplied
The government is looking at how it can cut down on the number of asylum-seekers - saying too many of them are making false claims.
It also looks set to bring in mass arrivals legislation, which would affect people claiming asylum after arriving by boat.
Immigration minister Erica Stanford said the government was looking at how to deal with the growth in asylum claims, which rose from 780 in the past financial year to 1336 in just the first seven months of this one.
Immigration minister Erica Stanford Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
"We've got a huge increase, as do every other country in the world, of people applying for asylum," she said. "And so we are also looking at how we try and control those numbers and we're looking to put into place a number of things to reduce those numbers down.
"[That's] in terms of stopping them from coming in the first place, because many of the claims - in fact the vast majority - are not claims that are going to be accepted, so they are false claims. We're working through a process of how we can mitigate that and also how we can also process them much faster on the ground as well, by putting additional resources in."
RNZ revealed details in November of how abuse of the system can take place, and in 2022, a woman implicated in fake claims was found guilty of immigration fraud.
Although claim numbers are at a record high - the figure pre-pandemic was 510 - claim approval numbers have remained fairly static.
Photo: Supplied
The percentage of those approved has dropped from more than a third in 2019/20 to less than a quarter since then. Rejection numbers include people who have withdrawn their asylum application.
Stanford said the government would also continue to look at the question of whether New Zealand could detain and deport refugee or protected persons, in circumstances similar to Ahamed Samsudeen.
Legal advice was sought about the question when the former Sri Lankan refugee was still in prison, and the Labour government said it would look at it again in the aftermath of his knife attack on shoppers at LynnMall in Auckland, two-and-a-half years ago
It was a complex question that was still being worked through, she added.
Maritime arrivals
The previous government brought in a bill last year which would have allowed asylum seekers arriving by boat to be held without a warrant for up to four weeks. It faced criticism from the National and Green parties.
But Stanford told RNZ that the government had been discussing next steps itself.
"We are considering that at the moment, that's under active consideration," she said. "I'll have more to say on that in the next week or so."
Human rights advocates and other submitters had opposed Labour's proposed law change, which would have allowed asylum seekers arriving by boat to be held without a warrant for up to four weeks.
The bill was aimed at dealing with the unlikely - but high impact - event of an asylum boat arrival, said the then-immigration minister Michael Wood.
Andrew Little, who took over the portfolio, said the legislation reflected updated assessments of national security risks and accused other parties of being "wilfully blind".
"It's incumbent on responsible MPs to take advice from officials. They can reject advice but the very first step is to at least receive it. They've declined even that step, it's a very serious matter."
