Indian student deportation is a sensitive issue for the wider community, and Indian Weekender has always taken the lead in covering this issue and raising a voice with the concerned authorities through our various platforms.
However, the latest student protest at a Mt Roskill polling station during the electoral voting has raised some questions that deserve serious attention.
The Mt Roskill by-election has attracted much public attention for the fact that it represents one of the most ethnically diverse electorates in New Zealand, and there were two Indian-descent candidates in the fray, prominent among them being National List MP Dr Parmjeet Parmar.
Probably this explains a provocative title for the event—"March on Parmar for Indian students"—with an apparent goal of cornering the Indian-descent MP on the pretext of failing to support the Indian students.
As reported earlier on our website, Migrant Worker Association, the lead organiser of student protest, had organised a student protest, supposedly to raise voice for the hapless students facing deportation notice on Saturday, December 3.
For the uninitiated, December 3 was the scheduled voting day for the Mt Roskill by-elections.
On an election day in New Zealand, electoral commission directive is in place, clearly embargoing media or any member of public from refraining from indulging in any activity or publishing that can potentially affect the voters.
It is therefore that a typical media entourage that is visible on any such protestations was mostly missing from the scene.
Though, Indian Weekender had still covered the event and delayed publishing of this news till 7 p.m. till when there was an embargo on news publishing.
The protest rightly brought the police on the scene with a warning to the protesters about a possible arrest if they did not back off, leaving some questions that need answers.
First, the important issue is that are the international students prepared to risk an arrest while already being on the shaky ground in the country with a deportation notice served?
Although the student's desperate situation is understandable and widely acknowledged by the community, it needs to be established that they are prepared to be arrested on the charge of interfering election process in the country.
The organisations leading such student protest on the pretext they have been "exploited" by the current National-led government have to answer the question if they are also not themselves "exploiting" these hapless students—a charge that they lay so repeatedly on the National government.
Migrant Worker Association’s event announcement on social media says about Dr Parmar that "she serves the wealthy and the Government and not the people in need. How many houses can one person own in the midst of a housing crisis, with people sleeping in garages and cars?”
Against this backdrop, it is important to ask if our international students should be worried or be seen publically lobbying to seek answers to such questions that Migrant Worker Association raises on their social media platform.
International students in New Zealand are considered as "guests" of the country until they gain residency if that is a goal at all.
Should a country's "guests" be seen publically protesting on such questions completely unrelated to their stay relatively short stay in the country?
To argue that these students are consciously indulging in such misguided protests will be an over-statement.
To this day, student protest organisers have not been able to approach the immigration minister directly or devise an alternative strategy to achieve the desired 'help' for the students.
All they have been doing is singularly targeting Indian-origin MPs, which questions the sanctity of their intentions.
Apparently, as of now, it is appearing that the student protest organisers are using hapless students to politically ambush Indian-descent MPs, with the obvious intention of creating political space for some other aspirants.
However, this does not help the situation of international students in any possible way.