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A passport stamped by Gerrard Otimi - Source: ONE News -
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Pacific Island overstayers continue to buy into a scam to get a fake New Zealand visa by forking out $500 each.
Maori activist Gerrard Otimi is behind the scheme, promising overstayers they can stay in New Zealand as an adopted member of his hapu.
On Friday, dozens of overstayers turned up to collect their passports at a house in Otara where 90 passports complete with stamp and certificate promising residency were issued to them.
It seems so many Pacific Islanders want to live in New Zealand that the passports represent $45,000 that has been paid over to Otimi.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Otimi says all the money he has made over the fake passports is in the bank.
He now says that he will just accept a koha or a donation from those coming to get his passports.
And he's not short of Pacific Island overstayers willing to provide that donation.
The Otara home is the home office of community worker Joanna Fuimaono who said that she was happy to look at anything that will help her people.
She says she has not encouraged anyone to pay Otimi but says they have exhausted all other avenues and it's a way of highlighting problems with the Immigration Service.
She says its decisions are failing Pacific people.
"We are pleading to the minister - the problem is from your office, from the Department of Immigration," says Fuimaono.
Both she and her colleague, lawyer Bruce Stuart, are calling for an amnesty.
"It shows there are a lot of people out there who are here
illegally and that needs to be resolved. The government needs to
deal with that urgently I think," says Stuart.
Meanwhile Otimi is doing a roaring trade, but it's not going down
well with some of his own people who have asked him to stop issuing
passports, calling it exploitation.
For the overstayers, Otimi's passports mean hope to a section of New Zealand society that is seen as one of the most vulnerable. But it's likely to lead to a whole lot of trouble, which already seems to have arrived.
Samoans make the highest number of overstayers in New Zealand and many of those who have shelled out cash to buy the passports are from Samoa.
But now the nation of Samoa is investigating whether the fake visas bought by these overstayers makes their Samoan passports invalid.
In the end it seems, the biggest loser in this sorry saga appears to be the overstayers.
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