Too Successful To Be Allowed to Continue

Bureaucratic Bumblers

The present Labour government is fast gaining a reputation for incompetence.  The latest "thing" is the imbroglio over the presence of a Ukrainian family in New Zealand.  They have been guilty of the unpardonable: they have bought and developed a successful business and they are being deported for their crime.

A Ukrainian family facing deportation once their work visa expires in July have received an influx of support from MPs and the public.  Nataliya Shchetkova, her husband Alex Derecha, and their five children, face an uncertain future after Immigration New Zealand's decision to deny the family residency because it does not believe their business adds significant benefit to New Zealand.

The family run Auckland restaurant La Vista which had a turnover of $1.6 million last year and employs 26 staff - 17 of whom are full-time.  Since the Herald shared their story this time last week, the family have received an influx of support from members of the public, MPs and Act Party leader David Seymour.  A petition has been launched and backed by Seymour, asking Parliament to urge the Minister of Immigration Iain Lees-Galloway and Associate Minister of Immigration Kris Faafoi to grant them residency by special direction.  The petition has received almost 10,000 signatures of support in two days.

Seymour has organised a rally for next Sunday to support the family.  "Nataliya Shchetkova and her family are much-loved community members and successful proprietors of La Vista restaurant in St Heliers," the petition reads.  "The Government has declined their application for residency despite the family building a successful business as required by their visa requirements. . . .

 Immigration NZ manager Michael Carley said . . .  residency was denied because her business did not add significant benefit to New Zealand.  "We do not consider the immigration officer who assessed the application made an error in advice and we consider the decision to decline, and the process followed, was correct," Carley said.  "A core reason for the decline was the business did not add significant benefit to New Zealand by creating sustained and ongoing employment, over and above the existing level of employment.  [NZ Herald]

Let's get this straight.  The business has been slammed for not adding enough benefit to New Zealand.
  Presumably if it were a marginal business, with falling revenues and heap of unpaid credit, it would meet all requirements in spades.  It would be a business which would give the government an opportunity to bestow gallons of corporate welfare, dumping lots of special grants to ensure that the business remained dependent upon the State.  Then it would be adding significant benefit to the country and to the gummint.

Shchetkova and her husband have worked without a day off for two years to make the business a success and to reach the forecast sales figures they needed.  "When we bought the business it was dying," Shchetkova told the Herald.

"For the whole six years we have employed 140 people - that's 140 New Zealand families; their children come to us and we upskill them, we give them some experience, something they can put on their CV.  "We have over 40 local suppliers, we support local businesses, we buy local, we live local, we spend our money local. We're contributing to GDP." . . .

"We feel like we've been used because we were welcome to bring our money and worked very hard all of this time and now what do they offer us? To sell the business for nothing? Nobody will buy the business for a fair price if they know the owner is going to leave the country."  (The family has been advised to sell the business and prepare to leave the country.)

Nataliya Shchetkova at her restaurant La Vista in St Heliers, Auckland. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The gummint bureaucrats have not the first idea, not a skerrick of comprehension, about how a successful business adds huge benefit to its suppliers, customers, staff, and community.  There is a giant bureaucracy in NZ called the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment.   But if an actual business engages in real-life innovation and employment, the owners must be stripped of their asset and deported.  Why?  Only in the byzantine world of bumbling bureaucrats would this make any kind of sense.