Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

Brilliant of Victoria University to sneakily serve that injunction before Salient returned from the ASPA awards. Not so brilliant of them to forget the point of ASPA is to enable simultaneous publication of student media news stories.

Victoria University: you got served.

Hint to Salient: During my lengthy on-again off-again relationship with Craccum magazine last century, abducted print-runs have variously turned up: in the crater of Mt Eden; scorched and sodden in a huge campus dumpster; and/or wedged between the buttocks of a litigious student executive election/VSM referendum.

Salient's current exposure has got to be the first time a student magazine wasn't even trying to make the national news. Who can remember all the student media scandals of yore? Um... let's see... the 'Dope Supermarket' in my first year, plus attendant death-threats ... How to shoplift/kill yourself/build a bomb/surf the net and publish what you find... Hmm, was there a repeat of 'how to kill yourself'? So at the ASPA awards on Saturday, when I called out "Dope Supermarket!" to Critic editor Holly Walker, who was touching ever so briefly on student media scandal and warning the audience to watch their drinks, her response was pretty much - "huh?" No-one at the ASPAs remembered that 'scandal' first-hand except for Martyn Bradbury, Tim Watkin and Tim Selwyn. We're all still here in various media incarnations, but the story itself? Meh.

Well, it was TEN YEARS AGO. When Martyn Bradbury still wore a bowler hat, had no tattoos or piercings, didn't know how to roll, and called himself a 'poet'. It would be a few years before Ben Thomas would turn up as one of my first-year Craccum news volunteers. He had a mohawk. And even after that, more than a year before before I stopped using a fake AIESEC card that said I was a 26-year old Malaysian international student to get into bars. It was a time before Public Address. BEFORE THE INTERNET. Google 'Dope Supermarket', and tellingly enough, this is the only thing that comes up.

Fucking hell, am I old or am I old?

Well, not as old as Russell Brown.

The ASPA awards were a lovely opportunity to catch up with my past generation of student media-hacks. It made me feel young again. Because they are all old now. And I am still younger than all of them. Starting university when you're sixteen is hard at the beginning, but boy does it pay off.

However, I was still older than everyone from this year's Salient, Critic and Craccum, with whom I crawled to a Korean Karaoke bar on Wyndham St. Maybe I was the only judge young enough to be allowed to 'hang with the kids.' Maybe I was the only one who knew the way to The Sixth Sense (which makes me not a 'token' Asian, but an Asian with specific cultural use-value). Maybe my blograde needed moral support after not coming top of the class (our people are not used to this sort of thing). Or maybe I just really really like Karaoke. It was not a
'seedy' establishment as some would have you believe, although it was above one of my favourite Canto-noodle bars 'Taller Park' (同乐园) which I like to call 'Trailer Park'.

Good ol' student media. Why, they're nearly as exciting to the mainstream media as bloggers these days.

But they work a lot harder.

****

I am still on blog-holiday by the way, but here are some links and stuff - that's all you come here for anyway, right?

Via angryasianman: Eva from America's Next Top Model (Executive Producer Ken Mok; no known relation) makes a racist crack during an improv-show celebrity MC-battle, and in the words of Steve Chow, gets OWNED by desi-girl Rasika. That's some big-ass ricetrack.

And from the same site, a cartoon, on the same big South-Asian Ass theme.

My two freedom-blogging cyberbuddies are in trouble as usual:
Amnesty International has launched an appeal for Martyn See, maker of Singapore Rebel, the documentary about Opposition Leader Chee Soon Juan which came here with the Human Rights Film Festival earlier this year. Martyn is still under police investigation, and it's not looking good. His thoughts on the Amnesty appeal here.

Why the latest uber-draconian Mainland Chinese crackdown on internet freedoms means that Glutter's own country is now a no-go zone for her.

How she and Reporters sans Frontieres will help me not be deported from China the next time I live there.

Glutter's Democracy Hardcore t-shirts: Support the Hong Kong Democracy Movement by ordering one, there are enough of you Hongkies out there.

From the 'Rockson goes to America' series, Rockson goes to San Francisco, the Asian Pride hub of America and finds the Chinese food to be all pian ang moh one.

The Other Mr Brown is tiring of the 'climate of fear: "Just once, for a change, I'd like to see news reports that state, "This incident contributed to a climate of a-little-bit-scared in the Singapore blogosphere." Not too likely...

...Given the likes of 'Blogopoly' - a board game for Singaporean bloggers.

Oh, and go to the Hip-Hop Summit this weekend. Just 'cos.

Yellow Peril returns to Tilegate: Why? 1. Seeing bloggers use 'Taito' as Phillip Field's first name (it's a matai title guys) is driving me crazy. 2. My growing suspicion that I personally declined Sunan Siriwan refugee status to start with...

That's right kids - the last scandal in an election so tight it almost hung the parliament, and it's all my fault!

In all seriousness - yes, the name looks increasingly familiar from my time of ploughing through the refugee-status asylum-seeker backlog. I can't be sure though - if I was sure that I had his file, then I wouldn't be able to talk about it. So let's say I'm not sure. It was years ago, and it was a massive backlog, and there were a lot of Thais.

This backlog, which saw credible and sub-par asylum-seekers alike waiting up to five years to get their claims heard, was built up under the Immigration rein of Tuariki/John Delamere in the National-New Zealand First-Mauri Pacific coalition government/dissolving blancmange of '96-99. Delamere's answer to reducing the number of asylum-seeking hordes was to underfund the relevant parts of the immigration service... leading to more asylum-seekers stuck in the system! Such genius. New Zealand First's immigration track record sure speaks for itself.

By the time the Labour government of '99-02 began sorting it out under the actually rather competent Lianne Dalziel, a big chunk of the backlog and inflow were Thais who probably just wanted to be normal illegal workers in Hastings orchards, but had been sucked into a refugee-status scam run by a shady Buddhist Monk. The Monk had charged them thousands of dollars to 'arrange' their work permits by lodging phoney and ridiculous obstructive refugee claims on their behalf (when they could have just lodged phoney and ridiculous obstructive refugee claims for free). These were eventually declined en masse at NZIS level, and en masse at the Refugee Status Appeal Authority.

The rationale for the applications was that having an asylum claim in the system prevented them from being deported, and allowed them to apply for work permits and the dole. However, these Thais were being scammed so badly and had so little ability or confidence to engage independently with the immigration system or the state authorities, that they hardly ever dared to approach a government building to apply for work permits, let alone the dole. They were just out in Hastings picking apples, trying to pay back their 'agents'/buy back their daughters from sex-traffickers/save up to get the hell home.

Pardon me for not caring too much what happens to Field. He's a matai, he'll survive, and I'll stand by what I said here in my immigration-service insider's analysis: namely, that he appears to have acted stupidly and dishonestly - for what I think are noble enough reasons - but should damn well wear the consequences. It's Siriwan who shouldn't be made to suffer in this case. Because the facts remain: He is a tiler, and as I noted earlier, New Zealand is suffering an acute shortage of specialist roofers according to the New Zealand Immigration Skill Shortage list, which could well have been why Damien O'Connor granted him the new work permit to start with. I mean, do I really have to show you a picture of a Thai roof? Let the guy in! Phillip Field's lack of judgement is not Siriwan's fault. The Buddhist Monk refugee scam was not Siriwan's fault. The inequities of the global economy are definitely not Siriwan's fault. And Labour's obvious indebtedness to Field for 'delivering' them South Auckland certainly should have no impact on the strength of Siriwan's case for a visa, either for or against it.

Is it Phillip Field we should be thanking for winning the election for the Left? Or is it South Auckland itself? I know who I want to thank: MAD FUCKING PROPS TO SOUTH AUCKLAND! This week all Central Auckland artschool indie student hipster dilettantes should be heading down SH1 to thank South Aucks. I don't know how exactly. Maybe by looking funny and skinny and white. If you're in Otahuhu, I recommend the Laotian place in the back right-hand corner of Food City.

This 'division' talk is a beat-up, but for one angle I'll come to later that does concern South Auckland. The even split in the election seems less of an 'I hate you fuckers' than a massive, flabby 'um...' on the part of Pakeha New Zealand. Germany, now there's a properly ballsed-up deadlock. Record unemployment, totally stagnant economy, election fought on desperation to do something drastic about the six-year economic crisis, population freaking out about the shattering of the social democratic consensus, with the result that no-one can do anything.

Here, same system, similar result, inverted context. Economy humming along, record employment, the 'best place in the world to do business' ahead of S'pore and HK according to the World Bank, election fought on petty gripes, coupled with dubious claims from the challenger that nothing serious would really happen to the social democratic consensus, with the result sending the message that no-one was ultimately trusted to actually do much of anything, especially as not much needs doing.

That's not division: that's boredom.

No wonder people wanted a race circus and gambling testicles and calculatoramas and billboard jokes and Brethrens, rather than actual policy.

Getting to be grumpy about race and sexual diversity is fun too, right? That's the impression I get of the grumpy people. But was that grumpiness coming from a place as visceral as the reaction of those who were under sustained attack?

The last Tagata Pasifika poll I saw had the Pacific vote going 77% Labour, 9% National. Mangere delivered over 70% of its party vote for Labour, far and away the highest in the country, in fact, a national anomaly. Anywhere else, breaking 50% for either party was an electorate-level landslide. And we know broadly how the National Party fares with Maori. National wrote off the Maori seats long ago, and not on 'one-law-for-all' principle quite frankly. Maori and Pacific people had the most to lose from a National government - they were voting for their lives - for their economic, social and cultural survival. Why should anyone have to vote for their life? There is a deepening division going on here. It's not urban versus rural or Maori versus Pakeha or Pacific versus Pakeha or 'Asian' versus Maori. It's right wing political parties (not even right wing people necessarily) versus brown people.

The parties of the right are totally failing to give Maori and Pacific people a reason to vote for them that is relevant to their community identity. I don't know why - it seems stupid to back the bigotry of old whities against the populations who will actually provide most of the new people in this country in the coming years. I don't how any political party can claim to represent all New Zealanders if it so consistently and obviously abandons people in this way, group by group. Until there's a day when a National Party leader can mount their victory podium draped with a lei, in front of a striking blue and white tivaevae-inspired backdrop, to a roar of Pacific approval, maybe they don't deserve to win. And South Auckland can keep on saving the rest of us.

****

And just so you know, it's not true that New Zealand never gets real refugees, nor credible and worthy refugee claims from Thailand. Check the latest Thailand DOS Report

The election process was viewed as generally free and fair; however, it was marred by widespread vote buying and the killing of some political canvassers during the campaign... Violence attributed to Muslim separatist insurgents in the southern part of the country resulted in almost daily reports of violence against government authorities and civilians at year's end. The judiciary is independent but was subject to corruption.

And that's not even getting into 'insulting the King' or the treatment of women. Though it's highly unlikely that Siriwan was an actual refugee, that's just for the record, okay? Inaccurate claims about asylum seekers and the immigration system, misapplication of matai titles, multiple misspellings of 'Brethren', it's all just tipping me over the edge.

With that in mind, I've got to take a few weeks off to concentrate on other projects. I keep saying this and never do it, so if you see me compulsively blogging, write to me and tell me to shut the fuck up. I'll post the most creative responses. I mean... no I won't... I ... oh crap.

Finally - Wellingtonians: head to Haining Street this Sunday 25th 11:30-1pm to remember the days of real racial division. A hundred years ago, white supremacist Lionel Terry went to Wellington's Chinatown to shoot himself a Chinaman. The murder victim was elderly goldminer Joe Kum Yung (周錦容/Zhou Jinrong). Terry was acquitted on grounds of insanity. Wellington's Old Generation Chinese community is holding a centenial commemoration with street theatre. The original script was kinda Kung Fu Hustle-influenced, but it might have moved on since then.

I've had my share of sand kicked in my face, but I've come throoouuughhhh (and we're gonna go on and on and on...)" The Karaoke Party HQ clustered around the TV as Helen Clark approached the podium, our only non-negotiable policy being to provide a mainstream soundtrack to political life.

"...Weeee are the champions, my frieeends, and weeee'll keep on fighting, till the end..."

Sincere apologies to the Farrar(!) Street Lost in Translation Karaoke-Election Night party for my shameless bogarting of the mic with oddly prophetic songs from the rather limited selection. From what I remember, this was the order:

- Papa Don't Preach (I'm in trouble deep)
- Killer Queen (he keeps Brownlee and Power, in his pretty Cabinet, let them eat cake he says, just like Marie Antoinette)
- Half of Bohemian Rhapsody (caught in a landslide, no escape from reality)
- Paint it Black (I see a red door and I want to....)
- Losing my Religion
- A Hard Day's Night
- Faith
- I Want Your Sex (sometimes you think you're gonna get it... but you don't and that's just the way it goes)
- Oops! I Did it Again

... all in under two hours - yeah, the coverage was probably excessive and the presentation overly dramatic. But hey, they were the one who invited Chinese girls dressed as Japanese girls to a Karaoke party. The hosts could have gone all the way and called it the JAP Party. But no-one would have got it.

Still, no-one was complaining about that finale. In a surreal catharsis to what has been, for me, an unbearably tense week, with little prompting from me the whole house began Rockstar:INXSing for Helen Clark as if powhiri-ing her onto our virtual Grey Lynn Arts-Film-TV Flat marae.

"And it's been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruuuise - I consider it a challenge before the whole human race, and I ain't gonna loooosssseee (and we're gonna go on and on and on and onnn)...

Yep, the trend of the Auckland swing to the National Party sure hadn't reached that gender-bending, arts-dole bludging, Creative New Zealand applying, documentary-making, DJing, novel-writing, liberal-blogging, hip-hop touring, TVNZ-working, TV3-watching, second-assistant-directing corner of Babylon. Any wonder the biggest bout of booing of the evening went to Peter Dunne for being snide about Auckland actors? BOOOO!!!! Where the hell would mainstream New Zealand be without Shortland Street? Hmm?

Given that I'd started on the tequila bang-on seven (on the very fine premise that every party wins with tequila), my memory has held on to little of Clark's qualified VJ-Day speech except for:
- the rather striking tivaevae-inspired red and white backdrop
- "Thank you Mainstream New Zealand"
- "We are humbled"
- that for some reason, possibly as she gave props to Mt Albert, I shouted "Morningside for Life!"
- Jeanette Fitzsimons directly afterwards indicating between the lines that a non-National government was the Greens' priority over coalition aspirations (in light of the threatened United Future blockade on Greens in Cabinet), and me explaining this to a bunch of people who seemed dubious that I had any idea what I was talking about given the state of me
- that after Jeanette finished, the DJ put on 'There is No Depression in New Zealand'
- the profound, inutterable sense of relief.

There is going to be so much post-election bloggage, my post-tequila head spins just thinking about it. The Division thing for a start. Does it really exist? How much do we hate each other, really? How does it relate to the Vision thing, and how are either affected by too much tequila?

Take it from me and the authorities of the tragically riven and reconstructing city of Mostar: what we really need for the healing of historical wounds is to build a massive monument to Bruce Lee.

In 1975 my parents witnessed their first real election. Drunk on the exciting freedoms of multi-party democracy, they cast their vote according to conscience not strategy, and as the results came in, they discovered that they were the only two people in Mt Roskill who had voted for ...the Values Party.

Bada-boom CHING!

True story, apparently. It may have just been a partial count that came up onscreen, but every family's got to start their national foundation-mythology somewhere. A secret ballot was something so special and worth savouring that they even kept their votes a secret from each other - it was only revealed when they saw that TV election special scan down to Roskill.

Phil Goff: seventeen million
National Party: not many, if any
Values Party: two.

In the tradition of antidemocracy and unsecret ballots, here are some thoughts on who I think my parents are voting for. No prizes for guessing how I vote - and who cares anyway? I'm totally predictable politically, as is everyone else on Public Address (except maybe Keith). Parents though... everyone loves a story about Tze Ming's parents and their quaint, Southeast Asian Doctory ways - how did they produce a daughter like that, and with their upper-middle-class tax bracket, which way will they go on Saturday?

At about the age of seven, trying to decipher the Herald front page, I asked dad "what's tax?"

"Tax is the means by which the collective will extracts wealth from the bourgeoisie in order to build the glory of the state through monumental architecture!" he exhorted, spittle flying across the room onto the portrait of Kim Il Sung. "Never forget my child, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few!" He thumped the Little Red Book rhythmically on the dining room table to emphasise his utilitarian diction.

Ah, no. Actually he harrumphed and said "Well income tax is a levy from individual income, collected by the government."

Cutting my losses with whatever 'income', 'individual' and 'government' were, I went straight for the jugular with my potent follow-up: "Um... What's a levy?"

Sweating now like Pansy Wong the other week, his comeback was something along the lines of: 'It's... it's a tax!'

Not a great communicator my Chinese-guy dad. After that fruitless experience, I gave up on talking to my parents about politics for at least another seven years. Along the way, ethics were formed through reading the Isaac Asimov Robot series in Mt Roskill Public Library, and socialism and race-consciousness turned up through finding a lot of rich white girls at my highschool to be kind of mean, snobby, spoilt and racist. I think I may have actually assumed during this time that my parents were conservatives... weren't everyone's parents conservatives? Especially Chinese doctor parents?

I should have noticed that my mother, ever an oldschool Chinese pragmatist, would always say her favourite song was Lennon's 'Imagine'. "It's very sensible," she'd say. A rather grounded, kitchen-floor-scrubbing entryway into hippy ideology. She was never a hippy though. Being a hippy was actually illegal in Singapore. One would expect those 70s ideals to have lessened over time. And in fact last night, almost bashfully, apologetically, ma said to me "it's terrible, but as I get older I just get more and more intolerant....

...of conservative right-wingers."

Leftened over time then.

This surely meant I had a good chance of avoiding the tendency of becoming more conservative as I got older, and like her, may become more radical with age. She disagreed, noting that I was a nutbar radical to start with, and would find it difficult to build upon that. "I was much more conservative when I came here," she said, "I came from Singapore, remember?"

Why, how could anyone forget! Oh wait, I'm thinking of that other woman from Singapore.

Given the Values Party punt on her first go at voting, she probably meant morally or socially conservative. Decades of working at the Alice Bush Family Planning clinic on K'Road though, that'll tear you a new moral vacuum. But I suspect she was always left wing. Unlike the situation of Paul Buchanan who chose to immigrate to New Zealand in the late 1990s on the vague impression he gained from a 50-year old brochure that it was a socialist paradise, it turns out my parents came here for the actually existing socialist paradise qualities of 1973. Then, throughout the 80s and 90s, they wished we'd gone to Canada instead, but tried not to mention it.

Ma has just given up her surgery practice, mostly out of 20 years of accumulated reform fatigue. For 23 years, she ran a GP practice in Orakei, on the corner of Kepa Rd and Kupe St. She's giving away the game to the Ngati Whatua marae clinic - they're a better deal for her patients. PHOs may have worn her out, but her view is that the system just needs some fine-tuning, and the results are actually being seen. The people who need primary care most are finally getting it, lots of it, and this is bringing down hospital admissions. My ma, she's so down with the streets that her doctoring acronym is Doctor RAP - look, she even tags it over her own bronze doctor-plaque. Here she is, frontin' all ruffneck on her last day, with Doctor Who, Milford Gangsta.

She was in the doldrums last night with the election odds turning. "The country back into debt!" she groaned, "Not again! It's so depressing!" She was slumped into my couch, reluctantly watching the Leaders' Debate. "Hey look, he's saying Helen Clark's not mainstream!" I mocked, trying to maintain cheer, "Oh, actually he's saying anyone who doesn't want a tax cut isn't mainstream! That's you! Mum, did you know you weren't mainstream?"
"So dePRESSing."
"Oh but if they get in, they won't be able to get the tax cuts past Winston Peters mum, don't worry, they won't be able to do anything. And then their government will collapse in like, a year or less." I don't like seeing my mother unhappy. I'll say anything!
"SO dePRESSing."

She then watched part of the marijuana-is-bad-for-kids'-brains-mkay? documentary and totally agreed that marijuana is bad for kids' brains mkay? She's a doctor, mkay? Then announced she was voting Green. "I think they lie the least," she said firmly.

My mum is cool.

Later, there was a commemorative tear or two watching Jordis (half Tongan! That means she's practically a New Zealander) sing 'Imagine' on Rockstar: INXS. I think it's narrowing down to a two-horse race between Marty and Suzie. Jordis is so great, but - let's just say I've imagined her future. And I'm not the only one.

And dad? He's a retired radiologist who used to work on the Shore, so I think he may have never actually met a Maori or a prostitute. And I think he's actually voting Progressive. Now that's retro.

As welcome as he is to the ranks, Taito Phillip Field should really have quit Cabinet before joining my comrades at the No Border Network. But now he's here, say it with me now bro, no-one is illegal!

And I do believe that. So I stand by the props I gave to Field for actually trying to help someone overcome the institutional (or as some prefer it, 'accidental') racism of the immigration system, while also noting simultaneously that for someone in Field's position, it was badly judged, politically naive, objectively exploitative, and bore the unavoidable whiff of corruption. Philip, you gotta refine your technique. There's some great stuff being done with border camps these days. Failing that, you can get a whole lot of passive-resistance activists together and form a human shield. And failing even that, fly your threatened-deportee to safety, then pay them at least the minimum wage to tile your house. If you were really going to be fair, make sure they weren't actually a tiler to begin with. In fact, the crapper they were at tiling, the more ethical your actions would be.

I don't know, maybe the minimum wage in Samoa is NZ$2 an hour.

I haven't found any actual new information since the TVNZ story broke on Monday, so all the information here on the case comes from that text and video-clip. Field, the MP for Mangere, flew Thai tiler Sunan Siriwan to Samoa to work on his house for $100 a week, while Field supported his application for a New Zealand work permit. The permit was subsequently granted by a Cabinet colleague (Field being Assoc. Minister Pacific, Damien O'Connor being Assoc. Minister Immigration). O'Connor denied knowledge of Siriwan's activities in Samoa.

Does it stink? I might be able provide some useful information, beyond the usual radical-absurdist ranting.

No, really.

In a former life, during the Year of the Tampa and 9/11, I was a Refugee Status Officer for the Refugee Status Branch of the N(no vowel here, no sirree)ZIS, and so, have a passing familiarity with the Visa & Permits system. I'm not a V&P expert, but here's what I can help you with.

Is it remarkable for Immigration Ministers to 'intervene' in visa matters? Hardly. There's a whole section of the Immigration Service set up exactly for appeals to the Immigration Ministers. It's called 'Ministerials', and its entire business is recommending to Ministers whether or not to make exceptions. O'Connor's letter was probably a template. If you don't say to everyone who gets a Ministerial reprieve that it's an 'exception', then everyone will want one.

Do 'personal representations' from MPs make much of a difference in Immigration Ministerials? Possibly not any more than from any other respected members of the public. Or at least, they shouldn't. MPs write letters for their constituents to the Immigration Minister all the time - a letter from your MP may even be a prequisite or de facto standard-issue for a Ministerial appeal, I can't quite recall. They also send them to Immigration Officers and Refugee Status Officers (who shove them down the back of a filing cabinet and get on with their first-instance determination jobs). They do it in their capacity as constituent MPs, and any influence they might have on the Immigration Minister should be nonpartisan. We don't know what kind of 'personal representation' (TVNZ's term) Field made to O'Connor, but based on what I do know, I see no reason to disbelieve O'Connor's statement that he made the decision to grant Siriwan's permit on the facts of the case before him. The fact that specialist roofers are on the NZIS Immediate Skill Shortage List tends to support this opinion, don't you think? Tiles go on roofs, right? Especially in Thailand. If Field was on top of his Immigration Skill Shortage lists (you'd have to be if you were repping Mangere), his ears would have pricked up twofold once Siriwan's tiling-experience came to light. Uncovering that skill would have given Siriwan a good shot at Ministerial appeal on merit alone.

So as little love as I have for the Immigration system (and I have very very little love for it) I don't think it's been abused by Cabinet nudge-winking in this case, at least from the information I have at my disposal. Questions over behaviour here are all isolated around Field. If my hypothesis about O'Connor's clean role in this affair holds up, it is damning that Field didn't disclose his employer-relationship with Siriwan to the Assoc. Minister for Immigration. I can't think of another reason he failed to disclose other than he knew it would look bad and jeopardise Siriwan's chances. Which it has now done, with O'Connor running back to his files like a good clean bureaucrat. So let us judge. Why not. I've determined hundreds of asylum-claims, I should be able to deal with one MP on a Tuesday night.

1. If Siriwan had stayed in New Zealand as an overstayer without help with his permit application, he would likely have been deported, given that the same fate had just befallen his de facto partner and child (NB: Thai marriages tend not to be officially written down, except in the brain of Buddha). As stated in the TVNZ clip, part of the reason why Field thought it would be a great idea to pay Siriwan's way to Samoa was to help him avoid deportation. Nice big softhearted tick.

2. Field didn't pay him anywhere near the New Zealand minimum wage for the job. Lose the nice big softhearted tick. But this is just a cosmetic blemish branching off the bigger badder picture.

3. Which is this: If Siriwan hadn't been a tiler, from what we know so far, Field wouldn't have flown him to Samoa to remove him from the threat of deportation. Consistency breaks down. The supported flight from the deportation threat (a previous deportation being a big black mark in applying for a work permit) was a matter of happy coincidence and mutual benefit. If Field had been just a local businessman, everything he'd done would have been perfectly acceptable. But he is not just a local businessman. The guanxi ghost starts to raise its head and howl. When do happy coincidences start to set precedents for expectations of mutual benefit for any person seeking aid from their MP? Big black mark. Red pen. Quality Assurance Programme Overload. System malfunction. You cannot expect vulnerable migrants from countries that run on guanxi to not make assumptions, to not play along with systems that you've set up for them, unintentionally or not.

4. But ultimately, laying low and laying tiles in Samoa was not what got Siriwan the work permit. If Siriwan had been a viticulturalist, an occupation also on the Immediate Skill Shortage list, and Field had no jones for a Samoan vineyard, he would have left Siriwan hiding from Border & Investigations in a Mangere garage. But there's nothing to suggest that Field wouldn't have written to Ministerials supporting Siriwan's work permit application as any MP doing their job would - nor that the permit wouldn't have been granted in accordance with skill shortage requirements. Would he have done so? It's impossible to answer. But if my faith in the despicable system holds up, no points lost here.

5. If Siriwan had absolutely no skills required by the NZIS Skill Shortage lists - if he like so many other seasonal or illegal Thai workers in hock to their moneylenders had been a goddamn paddy farmer - Field's support would probably not have been enough to qualify him for a work permit even if the character-reference was just as convincing. So it's impossible to even construct a hypothetical test here. By default, no points lost.

6. No disclosure to Immigration in Field's support for the work permit, that he was also employing Siriwan. Extrinsic justification of benefit to deserving migrant outweighed by instrinsic dishonesty and damage to transparent process. No excuse (even if he hadn't hired him yet). Heading for the shredder.

Conclusion:
Application declined. Taito Phillip Field you have failed as a responsible politician and MP, while weirdly enough, in concrete terms, proving yourself a better friend on the ground to Asian migrants than Steven Ching has been. You fucked up big-time, but I don't quite yet believe you're a bad guy. Too bad for you that it's three days 'til the election. I doubt that even a human shield can save you now. Is it time to say fa?

Update: new article in Herald today, but not online, has Clark backing Field as "trying to be helpful", and Field stating that there was no formal employment arrangement. He comes off looking 'nice'. No human shields required for now.

Additional notes:

1. Why, as I asked Idiot/Savant, is the government wanting to deport tilers during a skills shortage of specialist roofers? As is clear from the TVNZ story, Siriwan needed Keith Williams (the other tiler) to help him even speak to Field, and also to help him fill out his immigration application. Siriwan was probably in no situation to understand what his rights were, what he was eligible for, or that he actually was just as good as the people that New Zealand is spending big bucks on trying to attract from non-Asian 'traditional' (white) sources of immigration.

2. Policymakers are paid to think and have many competing ideas, and I hope that the concept of regularising and giving real rights to the illegal migrants who are actually already here and who are already working in those shitty jobs we can't seem to lure 'proper' immigrants to come and do, soon starts to get traction in NZIS policy as an alternative to recruiting European holidaymakers to pick apples ... or at least gets as much traction as the idea of derogating from the asylum-provisions of the Refugee Convention currently does. They think about everything down there, even if they know it's really really wrong.

3. Among other things it damaged, my time in the Immigration Service also destroyed my writing style, so apologies if this flashback post seems like it's been written by a lawyer whose hands are in prison and whose head is down the toilet.

4. Ironically, my theme for the May '06 issue of Landfall I've just started guest-editing is 'Borderline'. If you start wondering about any long Yellow Peril silences, blame poetry. Fucking poetry.

5. Or blame the election.