How can you be Māori, but not have New Zealand citizenship?
By not being born in New Zealand of course. The same way you can be Chinese and not have Chinese citizenship if you were not born in China, and your parents were not Chinese nationals. If you are are a third generation Chinese New Zealander, you don’t have automatic Chinese citizenship. And likewise if you are a third generation Maori living in say the UK, you don’t have NZ citizenship.
Bryers Ruddock’s grandfather was 1959 All Black Ron Bryers, his mother was famed singer Rhonda Bryers, known as ‘The Voice of New Zealand’, and his great-great-grandfather Mohi Tāwhai signed the Waitangi Treaty. His father, Scots-born Jock Ruddock was a celebrated wrestler who once tag teamed with Andre the Giant.
All great stuff, but all of it has nothing to do with citizenship eligibility.
But Bryers Ruddock is struggling to secure citizenship for his US-born children.
He was born in Australia when his mother was performing there, and moved back here within a month of his birth, before spending most of his childhood in Hawaii where Rhonda Bryers had a performing residency.
Bryers has a right to citizenship. He should have applied for it before he had children. Now as he did live here for a while, I would advocate that in his case, discretion should apply. But there is a difference between using discretion, and what he is demanding.
He moved back to Wellington in April with his three Hawaiian-born children, Hōhepa, Peatarangi and Īhāia, wanting to re-connect with whanau, but was dismayed to find there was no easy pathway to securing citizenship for them – in part because he too was born offshore.
The children are now technically overstayers and are unable to attend school.
Again, he should have applied for citizenship before moving here.
Stuff first reported on their case last month – since then, Bryers Ruddock has become more confident he’ll be able to navigate the system and eventually regularise their status.
But he has asked for an urgent Waitangi Tribunal hearing to resolve it faster, saying he owes it to all offshore Māori who risk being left without Kiwi citizenship. …
“I’d like to push it to where we can actually change the policy and give back to Māori born all over the world. This is a bigger problem than just me and my children: it’s something that needs to be brought up.”
This is a terrible idea. He is advocating that there be two classes of citizens – those with a Maori ancestor and those without.
“It makes no sense for indigenous people to be disconnected from New Zealand, New Zealand citizenship and being unable to return to the land that is rightfully theirs,” said Green immigration spokesman Ricardo Menendez-March, adding that fellow MP Lawrence Xu-Nan, who holds the party’s Overseas New Zealanders portfolio, was developing policy on it.
You know it is a terrible idea, because the Greens are in favour of it. The Greens believe that all of New Zealand belongs to Maori, and that people like Xu-Nan should be second class citizens.
Imagine if say Scotland adopted a law that said anyone with a Scottish ancestor had the right to citizenship in Scotland. So people in Scotlandwho are migrants would have inferior citizenship rights to anyone who has Scottish ancestry.
It is ludicrous that someone whose family may have lived in say the United States for the last 100 years should have a right to NZ citizenship because say their great great grand father was Maori.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders
No comments:
Post a Comment