Our Bureau
Wellington
The Immigration Minister of New Zealand, Erica Stanford has been under serious scrutiny after her insensitive comments on Indians. A statement in which she referred to Indians as akin to spammers has been condemned by Indian-origin Labour MP Priyanca Radhakrishnan.
Ms. Stanford in a parliamentary session that was held on May 6th was defending her use of a personal Gmail account for official correspondence. In her argument she gave an example of receiving emails from India which she always ignores as she regarded them akin to spam. “I receive a lot of unsolicited emails like, for example, things from people in India asking for immigration advice, which I never respond to. I almost regard those as being akin to spam,” she said.
Member of Parliament, Ms. Radhakrishnan took to her Facebook page and posted a statement which condemned these remarks of the Immigration Minister. She deemed these statements as insensitive and discriminatory.
She wrote, “Earlier this week, in response to a question by Willow Jean Prime, the Immigration Minister felt the need to single out people from one country/ethnicity in a negative light. If you’re from India, don’t bother emailing her because it’s automatically considered spam. So much for the National govt’s all-of-government focus on strengthening the relationship between India & NZ and focus on people-to-people links.”
Ms. Radhakrishnan also spoke to the Indian Weekender and criticised these comments by Stanford and deemed it as unexpected and unacceptable coming from a Minister from the government. She said, “Such comments reinforce negative stereotypes about an entire community. Particularly given New Zealand’s important relationship with India. Comments like these serve to reinforce negative stereotypes against an entire community of people.”
Ms. Stanford has since clarified that she didn’t mean to call the emails from India as spams and was just referring to them as ‘almost akin to spam.’ She said that the example was not to point out Indians but just a simple way of showcasing the number of mails she receives. She explained, “I did not say that I consider them as spam. I only said that I consider them almost akin to spam. In this instance, I recalled a recent email I’d received of this nature when answering.”
