THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1985. Stowaways and refugees

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 16

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, JULY 3, 1985. Stowaways and refugees

The two African youths who stowed away on the Operation Hope ship, Ngahere, should be sent home. This properly was the view of the Government last week, when the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, said that the pair could remain in New Zealand only for as long as it took the Government to arrange their repatriation. This week, the Minister of Immigration, Mr Burke, appeared to compromise that line. He said on Monday that the Government was prepared to entertain applications from the two for permanent residence in New Zealand, although there could be no guarantee that the applications would be approved and no preferential treatment would be given. Meanwhile, Andrew Mhando, a 21-year-old Kenyan, and Suddi Said, aged 15, of Tanzania, are being treated like ship’s passengers and have been given three-week temporary visitors’ permits. This response is charitable and humane, though at odds with the usual legal remedies for stowaways. The proper course, no doubt, seems a hard and therefore unpopular line to many. Sending the two home, these people would say, belies the merciful, caring element of the Operation Hope venture. The sympathy of many New Zealanders already has been touched by the youths’ story and pictures. This country’s laws, and the rules covering the right of entry to New Zealand, are not to be ignored or observed on the whim of emotions, however. Immigration policies are a tricky enough maze when there is a clear set of rules plainly set out for all to follow. They become a hopeless mire if any person — pillar of society or prince of rogues — is allowed to bypass the rules and still be made welcome. Side-stepping the first barriers to lawful immigration by the illegal act of stowing away should not be a passport to permanent residence. By making special exceptions in this instance — for the best of humanitarian reasons, no doubt — the Government nevertheless has opened itself to claims for similar concessions from other stowaways in the future.

If the two Africans are allowed to stay, all of the Pacific Islanders and others on waiting lists who want to come to live in New Zealand legitimately, and even those who have been deported as overstayers, would have ground for complaint. They, or lawyers acting for them, could argue that the law is being applied erratically and unfairly if public sentiment about the plight of starving Ethiopians and Sudanese should mean that two stowaways from other parts of Africa gain official approval for their means of entry to New Zealand and permanent residence. The youths appear to regard themselves as refugees from their countries, rather than from drought or famine. They had stowed away to get from their own countries to Port Sudan, where they later hid aboard the Ngahere. Life is not easy in their own countries, but it certainly is worse in drought-stricken Sudan. They have not sought political asylum, though they say that they will “be in trouble” if they are sent back to their own countries. Few New Zealanders familiar with the way things are done in the one-party socialist States of black Africa, including the Commonwealth ones, would doubt the genuineness of the stowaways’ reluctance to return. Mr Lange, however, claims a special rapport with the Governments of Kenya and Tanzania after his African safari and should be able to warrant the youths’ safety. Around the Pacific and South-East Asia many countries are straining under the burden of Asian refugees whom they are ill-equipped to take. The thousands of people fleeing communist Vietnam’s domination of Indo China, their distressed and reluctant hosts, and the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees whose refugee camps are bulging at the seams, all wish that New Zealand would relieve the strain by taking more of the dispossessed people. There is as much humanity and more justice in this course of action as there is in accepting stowaways from Africa or anywhere else.