Migrant who sank Darleen Tana’s career faces unhappy exit from NZ
Santiago Palma may be forced home, saying he’s being punished for speaking out, writes Steve Kilgallon
The Green Party have made a plea for the migrant whistleblower who torpedoed the career of one of their own MPs to be allowed to stay in the country.
Santiago Latour Palma spoke out to Stuff last March about the alleged exploitation he suffered at the bike shop owned by Christian Hoff-Nielsen, the husband of Green MP Darleen Tana. Tana was eventually ousted from Parliament as a result.
Palma’s visa expires on Friday, and Associate Immigration Minister Chris Penk has, so far, refused to intervene in the case.
I’m not sure whining to the Journalist who carried his story around the country to denigrate the Greens will have much luck with continuing to whine.
There are lots of terrible stories of migrant worker exploitation, Palma’s wasn’t one of them and his desire to be grandiose for Steve Kilgallon’s benefit never sat right with me.
I got the feeling Palma was always an attention seeker who turned his story into infamy and now is bitching that no one else wants to touch him with a bargepole.
Ironically it is the Greens who are stepping up for him which is a reminder of what a good bunch of buggers they are.
Let’s go back to his complaining…
He says he’s deeply disillusioned with his experiences in New Zealand – but despite that, wants to stay on.
“I shouldn’t be punished by the system for reporting it,” says Palma. “I’ve done nothing wrong, I only wanted to work. They’ve made that impossible.
“When I go to interviews for jobs … they see the visa says ‘exploitation’, they say ‘what kind of visa is this?’ and when you say you are the guy who reported Darleen Tana, and you need to be sponsored, nobody wants to contract you.”
…no tears being shed here…
Palma has written to multiple government ministers pleading for their intervention. In his letter, he wrote: “This is not just my struggle—it is a matter that concerns the broader integrity of New Zealand’s institutional credibility. Your failure to act sends a disturbing message: that exposing wrongdoing can be met with neglect rather than support. Is this the standard you wish to set?”
He said not a single minister had responded to him. “It feels like a systematic failure. This is not justice. Their silence feels like complicity. If you don’t pay your taxes, you go to jail. If you exploit migrants, nobody cares.”
…turned out Penk’s Office has in fact emailed him several times, so that’s simply not true.
We have terrible migrant worker exploitation in NZ but to take what happened to Palma and call it exploitation seems like a long bow to draw especially when he was so keen to milk the publicity while it helped him.
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The Greens have to support Santiago Latour Palma. Failing to do so would open up the possibility that they were wrong to dump Darleen Tana.
Fact 1. New Zealand exploits migrants. Fact 2. Economic migrants are self-interested, by definition.
Between these two facts, mass immigration is an ongoing disaster and scandal for this country.
I refrained from judging Darleen Tana on the exploitation issue because I do not know all the facts but I can say that she was unwise to have got involved with migrant labour. I don’t know all the rights and wrongs of Palma’s case either, but I can say that he was unwise to have got involved with New Zealand employers.
Seems more like he is exploiting the system to jump residency, remind me how he’s a victim again?
Possibly the worst example of the National government disowning whistle blowers, and where New Zealand’s international reputation was actually at stake, was their response to Hager&Stephenson’s meticulous “Hit &Run” report on the SAS in Afghanistan. Then PM Bill English dismissed it cavalierly and took the wife to a pop concert instead.
National’s John Key who held the msm in the palm of his greasy hand, told them that Nicky Hager was a conspiracy theorist – something like that – when Hager published “ Dirty Politics”, exposing the soiled underhand strategy that the Nats used in their political campaigning.
When politicians treat our own people so dishonourably, and almost get away with it, an immigrant whistleblower is likely to be majorly disadvantaged when a National government is in power.
Don’t know the details of this guy’s case, but Nat hypocrisy is never a surprise, i.e.
1.) Immigrant labour exploitation is a terrible thing when it can be used to damage the Green Party, but also
2.) Immigrant labour exploitation is a good thing for employers and whistleblowers shouldn’t be allowed to stay in the country and potentially keep exposing it.
Another day, more depravity on the Right.
He should be thankful that he’s free enough to fuck off.
In fact. Darleen and Santiago can both fuck off. How’s that for freedumbs an’ that?
He was exploited, it was proven and Tana lost her job because of it. Why are you being so mean about this guy? I don’t get it. Because he’s not an agricultural worker exploited by their agent? That’s terrible too, and so is the fate of many on fishing boats, however it doesn’t mean you can negate what Palma went through.