Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said last month that Australia should only be deporting criminals with genuine links to New Zealand.
14 January 2018
Australia will deport a convicted criminal to New Zealand who has never set foot on our shores.
It comes after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said last month Australia should only be deporting New Zealand-born criminals who still have genuine links to New Zealand.
Alex Viane, 40, was born in American Samoa and became a New Zealand citizen as a child, but never entered the country.
Helen Murphy, of Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Society (PARS), says deportees are having their “whole history wiped out. It breaks my heart. It’s draconian stuff”. (Photo: John Kirk-Anderson/Stuff)
He went to Australia as a teenager on a temporary visa, and over a span of 25 years was convicted, and in some cases jailed, for several crimes.
In July last year, Australia’s minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, cancelled Viane’s visa on character grounds.
[Read the full Sunday Star Times article].
