'Full briefing' on profiling tool demanded by Immigration minister

Thursday, 5 April 2018

Illegal immigrants could be on a fast track to deportation if they belong to a demographic group identified as being a burden on the country. Guyon talks with the Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway.

Immigration NZ may be on a slippery slope using computer software to prioritise the deportation of overstayers, an advocacy group has warned.

The department has been running a pilot programme at its Auckland office for about 18 months to profile and prioritise the deportation of overstayers and others who had breached their visa conditions, Immigration NZ assistant general manager Peter Devoy has confirmed.

The profiling tool analyses historical information on about 11,000 illegal immigrants, including their country of origin, age and gender, and whether they have been involved with the police, been illegally employed, or used health services to which they were not entitled.

It then uses that data to forecast the 'harmful' impact individuals might be expected to have in future, in order to prioritise deportations.

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Devoy said profiling by Immigration NZ was not new and it had had a profiling branch since 2005 that conducted risk assessments, for example to help identify people who might be illegally coming to New Zealand to pursue sex work.

June Ranson, chairwoman of the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment, said if profiling was being using to prioritise the deportation of overstayers, it might be 'less objectionable'.

Former immigration minister Michael Woodhouse defended Government agencies use of predictive analytics last year.

But the association's main concern was that profiling might be used in future to try to forecast whether people who were applying for visas based on being the partner of a New Zealand citizen were in 'genuine and stable' relationships.

'We believe this could critically undermine the applicants' and their New Zealand partners' rights in the protection of their family unit. And that is something protected by international law,' she said.

Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway has asked for a full briefing from Immigration NZ after becoming aware of its pilot programme on Thursday.

But he said it would be unfair and misleading to describe it as 'some sort of 'bureau of pre-crime''.

His advice was the tool was only being used to accelerate the deportation of people who were already here illegally, and who had been identified as presenting 'the biggest risk to become burdens on New Zealand's social services', he said.

'If I got any suggestion that they were solely profiling people based on race that would be unacceptable to me and we would deal with that.

'But the advice I have received is they use a range of information to prioritise who among the people who are unlawfully in New Zealand they will take enforcement action against.'

Asked whether Immigration NZ might be interested in a software tool that profiled visa applicants by race, age and gender to forecast who might make the biggest economic contribution to New Zealand and pay the most tax, Devoy said such a tool might be worthwhile to 'someone else'.

'But our business is compliance, the integrity of the immigration system, and working with the overstayer population.'

Immigration NZ forcibly deported 747 people who were unlawfully in New Zealand last year and negotiated the 'voluntary departure' of 1437 more.

Devoy said it had not made a decision on whether to take the overstayer profiling pilot nationwide, describing it as still 'rudimentary'. He believed that would largely be an operational decision and not one that would need to be signed off at a ministerial level.

Immigration NZ had not disclosed the pilot in its 'briefing to the incoming minister' in October as the briefing had been at a 'high level', he said.

New Zealand is among a club of 'digitally-advanced nations' that is considering whether new rules may be needed to protect citizens' rights when decisions affecting them are made using computers.

Open Government Minister Clare Curran announced in February that New Zealand would lead the project for 'D7' countries, which also include Britain and Canada, on what has been dubbed a 'digital bill of rights'.

One of the issues it would look at was whether people should have a right to an explanation of how computers had been used to make decisions about them.

A new law coming into effect across the European Union on May 25, called the 'General Data Protection Regulation', will give Europeans the right to an explanation when an automated decision is made about them.

It also goes further by saying that people should have the right to have a human involved in any 'significant' decision affecting them, unless there are suitable legal safeguards.