CHASING THE MIGRATION DREAM—NO MATTER HOW

Dev Nadkarni


Last month, a man and his family in Auckland were accused of “granting” fraudulent visas to overstayers in New Zealand, a majority were from the Pacific Islands.
Gerard Otimi allegedly organised huge meetings in different places in Auckland and other towns in the North Island and collected $500 from each applicant stamping their passport with fake residency visas (reportedly these looked quite close to the real thing).
The man is now under police investigation and refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing on the basis of some convoluted logic. But that is not the point here.
The question is, what is it that drives hundreds of people to men like Otimi? It is hard to believe that all these people were so naïve as to be completely taken in by his claim of offering residency outside the ambit of the government’s immigration system.
The simple answer is desperation to dig in their heels in the country at any cost, and consequently the will to actively connive with any alternative means that purports to grant residency (such as Otimi’s scheme) no matter how suspect it may sound—and of course, taking comfort of the safety in numbers: “if so many have done it, there must be something in it.”
Most tellingly, the meetings which hundreds are believed to have attended were popularised by sheer word of mouth, without any kind of media advertising—thereby effectively keeping the activity under any official radar.
Having collected the “fee” from each hopeful, Otimi allegedly stamped their passports with “residency visas” and told the recipients that they were not to leave the country for ten years—effectively ensuring they would escape being detected at ports of entry for a decade.
You would think none of this raised suspicion in the minds of the wannabe residents because none squealed. But it was obvious that all these people were playing along with the perpetrators of the scheme simply because when it was uncovered and the government asked those affected by the scheme to come forward, none did.
Almost everyone seems to have blended back into the woodwork where they came from when they first heard of Otimi’s scheme. Quite clearly, every one of them knew about the lack of veracity of the scheme and it was just another bid to acquire a piece of paper that purported to be their certificate for residency. Effectively, they connived with the perpetrators. If there was even one genuine person among them that felt cheated by the scheme, he or she would have complained.
Around the world, people brave the high, turbulent seas in rickety, overcrowded boats that often capsize before they get anywhere. In places, they stuff themselves into containers that take them across political borders, many times asphyxiating to death in the dark, damp claustrophobic confines of those containers.
In other places, they dig tunnels under guarded fences that separate countries only to be found out and then spend the better part of their lives in detention centres before being deported to either where they came from or to a country they never intended to go to.
One can understand people’s motivation to get away from their countries where extremely dangerous or adverse conditions like civil wars that are fought particularly between ethnic groups exist. But what is it that motivates people from traditionally peaceful countries where nearly no poverty or strife existed historically (at least in comparison to some of the world’s worst hot spots today) to take resort to such go-for-broke subterfuge as the Pacific Islanders in the Otimi scheme?
Why would islanders whose home countries have long been blessed with the natural bounty of food, shelter and secure environment want to be so desperate to get into western countries like New Zealand and Australia at any cost, risking life, limb and reputation?
While there can’t be simple answers to such a question, there are some obvious pointers. A rapidly monetising economy (as against a subsistence economy that has existed since times immemorial) has put undue pressures on Pacific Islanders throughout the region to earn cash money—something impossible to do in fringe communities where most live.
Development has brought power supply and drinking water to even the remotest villages but there has arisen a need to pay for these services in cash—a scarce commodity that was not terribly needed to get by in life for several generations.
This has necessitated families to send away their youth to urban centres to earn a cash wage to be able to pay those mounting utility bills. The price of development has taken another toll as well.
It has loosened the extended family structure so characteristic of Pacific Island life and it is no coincidence that urban crime has spiraled in many of the island nations. So has family-based ligation over lands and property especially in countries like Samoa.
If it is need for cash that has driven islanders to urban centres, it is the need for more cash accompanied by progressively declining opportunities in those centres that is driving these people to seek their fortunes overseas.
So frustration at home and the desire to earn more and aspire for a higher standard of life is a powerful force to propel them into seeking their fortune in the promised lands of the West.
And to achieve that, they will stop at nothing—conniving as they did with those who devised the Auckland visa scheme is a relatively low risk ploy.
There is little doubt that the problem will only continue to grow in the coming years to resort to illegal means as conditions get tougher at home and visa regimes of the western countries progressively get tougher.
The only way this could be reversed is by wiping out the poverty of opportunity in the islands—which indeed is easier said than done. For tied to it is visionary leadership, a firm commitment to good governance and a genuine aspiration among leaders to achieve better standards of living for the people of their countries.
But as we all know only too well, these are the exact virtues of which there is the greatest poverty.