A Visa for Trump?
Donald J Trump has surpassed a fair few records over his time in politics (and a few before that), but the most recent one, is of interest to me, because of the fact that as the first President (technically ex-President) to have been convicted of a crime, he is now also the first President who would potentially need to file a Visa application to travel to New Zealand. In addition to filing the Visa, his application would more than likely need to undergo a formal assessment of character given the nature of the convictions involved and that is before the other three cases he is embroiled in, come to a conclusion. At the rate he is going, he might be the first President to need a Special Direction to apply for a visa to visit this little island nation, which is no small feat. This wouldn’t be restricted to just New Zealand either, as many countries operate the same character assessments for anyone crossing their borders.
The land of the free, just became a little more restrictive for Mr. Trump.
Whilst quite entertaining, at least if you do what I do, it does raise some interesting questions on how fairly we treat people, based on their individual situations and whether or not your status (political or otherwise) has any impact on your ability to skirt the rules. As with any of these things, there are often exemptions or caveats, but on the whole, New Zealand has a pretty solid history of applying one rule to all (at least when it comes to character). Politically we have had some ups and downs with this in recent years, but the rules are pretty clear and in this case Donald will have to close his Twitter (X) feed momentarily and head on over to the INZ Visa application platform if he wants to grace us with his presence.
You Shall Not Pass!
As I was thinking about this article on my morning commute to the office, I did have images of the Don, facing off against our most beloved wizard Gandalf (yes he does belong to NZ!), in a “you shall not pass” moment. Replace the wizard with a bespectacled public servant, holding a clipboard and a row of ball point pens, and you might get a bit closer to reality.
Mr. Trump would in effect be subject to the same scrutiny as everyone else, albeit that there are mechanisms where the Minister may step in to override those issues, if it were in the public interest to do so. The Minister does have the discretion to grant a visa to anyone for any reason and in spite of any issues that might be involved. To do that in this situation might be a bit of a political hot potato that no one would want to swallow or even mash, given his reputation.
Character Assessments
New Zealand has very stringent criteria for character, although the requirements over what to declare and not declare can be confusing.
This is also not unfamiliar territory and in 2015, R&B singer, Chris Brown was denied entry to Australia for his criminal offending, and then subsequently withdrew his application for a New Zealand Work Visa, having cancelled that leg of his tour. Although no decision had been made on the application before it was withdrawn, the Minister at the time did make it clear that the celebrity performer would need a special direction in order to be granted a Visa. There was support from some parts of our political spectrum for his visit, probably due to the economic impact his tour might involve, but also strong opposition from other parties, given his convictions related to domestic violence.
There have been plenty of other “A listers”, who have had to run the visa gauntlet, including Boy George, along with members of the Culture Club, the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots and Def Leppard’s Rick Allen - most of which were actually allowed in despite their criminal backgrounds.
In the cases where these individuals have been approved, clearly the economic benefits to them being able to perform here have outweighed the perceived risks and ultimately that is what the character assessment process is designed to do. In the case of a performer that is potentially a bit easier to quantify, given ticket sales and tours generate income for the host country. However in the case of Trump, whilst he is no doubt a performer, the assessment would be whether or not there is a public or national interest in him travelling here. Of course that will depend on whether he manages to claw back the Presidency, and then whether he will be fulfilling that role from behind bars. He might just be the first President to rule the country, whilst wearing a striped jumpsuit.
One Rule For All…
We do indeed have one set of rules for all applicants and those rules apply no matter what your status, position, wealth or any other factor might be, however that doesn’t mean that we apply those rules to all people in the same way and as mentioned above, there are circumstances were Ministers might intervene to override the more general assessment that INZ might make.
This usually occurs when an applicant and their application is likely to make headlines and in fact INZ has a term for this, that they attach to applicants and their records, to make sure everyone has a heads up. That term is NSFS or a “No Surprises Fact Sheet”. These memos, alert senior officers, and even the Minister to the fact that an applicant may be newsworthy (so tread carefully). There is nothing like a potential media frenzy to make a Minister think twice about the decision to intervene or to grant a vias. These NSFS documents allow things to happen well in advance of any press attention.
Same Rules for Everyone
Our system is intended to apply the same requirements to all applicants regardless of their status or background, of course there are always exceptions…
Sometimes this information pops up even before an application is presented and for those of you familiar with the Kelly-Jay Keen-Minshull (aka Posie Parker) debacle in 2023, you will recall that there was significant debate as to whether she would be given permission to enter.
Even though Posie had not committed a specific criminal offence, that would require a character assessment, her activities and reputation were such that certain political factions and interest groups were arguing it was not in the public interest to allow her in. The rationale was that she may be a threat to “public order”, which ironically turned out to be true, although only because the various people protesting at her event made it so. Our rules do however include a section that allows the Minister through INZ to bar someone who even though they might not have committed a crime, has the potential to do so, or to create an unnecessary risk to the country, its reputation or its people.
I last year, assisted someone who had a fairly strong social media profile and a relatively specific set of political views, who was denied boarding for similar fears, although admittedly he did have convictions, which were explainable. In that scenario INZ were “tipped off” to this person’s planned travels and that resulted in officials preventing them from getting on the plane in the first place. We did eventually get them here, and whilst I might not have agreed with their political views, I did not think it was my place or our Governments to deny him the right to be here with those views.
So while there are rules that apply to everyone, like any system administered by Government, there is the potential for those rules to be bent or overridden if there is significant political or public interest to do so. Of course that brings in a much more subjective approach and can backfire. A previous Minister of Immigration, about five back if I remember correctly, granted Residence to a drug-smuggling, gang affiliated, Czech citizen and then later had to retract that decision after it was clear that many of his claims about “risk to life” were fraudulent. That created quite the political storm, considering the Minister had all of that information at his disposal at the time the first decision was made.
No matter how fair and balanced a system is supposed to be, it is just a system. Despite our bumps along the way, overall New Zealand manages to both apply these specific rules pretty consistently and does give people the opportunity to argue their case, where their case might warrant some sort of leniency, second-chance or the positive outweighs the negative.
In the case of Mr. Trump, you might be hard-pressed to find any positives that outweighs the negative, but ultimately if he was to be in any position of power again (and not in a jail cell), there would be logistical and diplomatic reasons as to why a Minister might intervene…potentially saving any poor INZ case officer from having to actually deal with the application directly.
Fairness
Whilst we do have clear rules for these sorts of situations and we try and to apply them to all applicants in equal measure, that doesn’t always means the entire system operates in a fair manner. The topic for next weeks blog potentially but there are plenty of examples where INZ’s own internal process (not necessarily reflected in the rules) creates an unequal playing field for applicants in similar situations. Dealing with those is often the domain of specialists such as ourselves, although arguably we try and avoid applicants getting themselves in to those situations in the first place.
For Mr. Trump and assuming he faces a similar outcome in his upcoming legal proceedings, it will be interesting to see how various countries, including this one, treats his potential visits, after all, he has his own airplane. Whilst the decision to grant anyone a visa is governed by a single set of rules and process, there are always situations, especially in more high-profile cases where more significant forces come to bear - I wouldn’t like to be the Minister tasked with making that decision however.
For those of you out there, considering the move, and not on the A list, but who might have an issue or two to declare, it is really important to understand how you navigate that process and that there is in fact a process to navigate at all. That doesn’t mean we can let everyone in or course, but where there is a good case to be made for someone who might made a mistake in their past, there are always options to pursue. However making sure you are treated fairly and equally under those rules, might just need a little bit of help from someone like us.
Until next week!
