That Guy’s wrong

It’s always dodgy to call someone a liar, even when it’s sometimes hard to draw any other conclusion. Nathan Guy, the Minister of Immigration, misled the New Zealand public by using obviously wrong information. But is he a liar?

On May 10, Guy announced that in five days he was eliminating the “Sibling and Adult Child Category” for immigration, stating that the change:

“…will reduce the number of unskilled migrants who find it more difficult to get jobs and are more likely to end up on a benefit. Research has shown that only 66% of people who gain residence as siblings and adult children had a job after 18 months, despite a job offer being required for residence."

Um no, no it doesn’t. Guy is flat out wrong and obviously deliberately misleading the New Zealand public, and this wasn’t the first time he tried this. On March 6, Guy appeared on TVNZ’s Breakfast morning infotainment programme and said of migrants to New Zealand:

“…. those [immigrants] that have been coming in previously have been very reliant on benefits. Even though they have had to have a job offer, in a lot of cases we have found that after a study we have done on the first 18 months that a third of them have ended up requiring a benefit.”

That sounded awfully suspect to Tammy Bell, owner of Move2NZ (The link has a complete transcript of the interview), a site that specialises in helping migrants to New Zealand. So, she filed an Official Information Act request to find out what Guy was on about.

Guy responded, “only 66% of migrants who obtained residence through the Sibling and Adult Child Category reported having a job when surveyed 18 months after taking up permanent residence in New Zealand.”

That means that Guy was being deceptive in the interview because only 2.5% of all approved residence applications were in that category, not all migrants as Guy implied in the interview. There’s another, bigger problem with Guy’s statements: He implies that ALL of those unemployed migrants in that tiny category are on a benefit, which is simply not true: This small group of migrants is simply not in paid full-time work, which is absolutely not the same thing as being on a benefit.

According to Tammy Bell, official statistics show that the 66% of that tiny percentage of migrants weren’t in full-time work at 18 months because 14% were retired, 33% were caring for dependents, and 29% were studying. That’s obviously different than being on a benefit.

Also, such migrants couldn’t claim a benefit for two years—at 18 months, the time of the statistics Guy selected to use, they wouldn’t even be eligible for a benefit. Instead, they would be reliant on their sponsoring family members for support, who are legally liable to reimburse the government for any costs to the taxpayer associated with these migrants.

So, what’s Guy playing at? Why is he deliberately deceiving the New Zealand public? There are two reasons.


The first reason is the National Party-led Government’s war against beneficiaries. In that same interview, Guy said:

“Hard working taxpayers in New Zealand need to know that their money is being well invested, not spent on people sitting around on benefits, and you will know that the government is talking about big welfare reform plans this year, and these changes very much line up with those.”

Never mind the fact that his statistics were false, that these migrants were not “sitting around on benefits”, why let the facts get in the way of another opportunity to bash beneficiaries?

The other reason is this Government’s dismal failure to manage the business of government. Again according to Bell, the National Party Government cut the department’s workforce by about a third, resulting in a $44 million deficit—coincidentally, roughly the amount of money Guy claims his changes to immigration policy will “save” taxpayers. Such a coincidence!

So, it’s pretty obvious that Nathan Guy deliberately mislead the New Zealand public in order to justify and promote the National Party’s ideological assault on beneficiaries, and to cover up their incompetence in managing the business of government.

Still, it would be wrong to call him a liar, rather than an ordinary Tory ideologue, because he was honest about one thing. Asked in the interview whether National’s immigration policy changes would “create an immigration system that favours the wealthy,” he responded, “we make no bones about that.”

And on that one point, we can all agree that Guy’s not wrong.

Footnote: As an immigrant, I take immigration policy both seriously and personally. However, none of National's changes would have affected me in any way. Just so we're clear.