Source: Radio New Zealand
The US Embassy in Wellington. Wikimedia Commons
US diplomats have yet to raise the matter of migration with New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) after being directed to do so by the Trump administration.
A New York Times report on Wednesday said US embassies in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand had been instructed to pressure their governments to heavily restrict migration.
Ambassadors and their staff were advised to “regularly engage host governments and their respective authorities to raise US concerns about violent crimes associated with people of a migration background”, according to the Times.
In a statement to RNZ, an MFATspokesperson said: “There has been no such engagement.”
1News also reported comments from an unnamed US State Department official expressing concern that liberal democracies were signing up to “the globalised migration narrative”.
“The idea that you can just import large amounts of people from a different culture – a radically different culture even – and assume that everything will be fine and hunky dory when case studies have shown that that isn’t the case,” the official told 1News.
“It’s a risk that we see potentially affecting New Zealand as time goes on.”
Speaking earlier this week, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said New Zealand’s immigration policy would be decided by New Zealanders.
“New Zealand has an outstanding immigration system,” he said. “We have good control of our borders. We don’t have problems like I observe in other countries around the world with illegal immigration.”
Luxon told reporters he was very proud of New Zealand’s policy and the many immigrants who had made New Zealand home.
“They’ve made New Zealand a much better place.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
