Government caught out lying about Indian Free Trade Deal
Trade Minister Todd McClay has confirmed the India Free Trade Agreement would not allow New Zealand to impose a specific cap on the number of student visas issued under the agreement.
However, he said the agreement would allow New Zealand to impose a cap on student visas from all countries including India, as long as it did not discriminate against India specifically.
The clarification comes after weeks of back and forth about whether the deal strips any future government from putting a cap on Indian student visas, which culminated in McClay telling Parliament the deal “does not restrict future governments from creating a cap should they wish to”.
The agreement’s text, which is yet to be published but part of which has been seen by the Herald, explicitly restricts either party from imposing a numerical limit on students from India to recognised education institutions – banning New Zealand from ever capping the number of student visas issued under the deal.
NZ Herald
So the Government have been lying to us all this time over their flawed Free Trade Deal with India?
The deal does remove caps for Indian students.
NZ First was right.
This is a terrible blunder by the Government and McClay should be flayed alive for it.
Lying about mass immigration policies when there are already cultural tensions from domestic workers facing rising immigration is an accelerant.
Labour have a very clear and obvious solution:
1 – Enrol all migrant workers into universal migrant Unions to stamp out exploitation and set basic conditions that don;t undermine domestic workers to alleviate those cultural tensions.
2 – Put an overall cap on students and allow whomever to fill that cap.
