@Dan: I wouldn't dream of correcting your grammar. :-) Some of our native-born English-as-a-first-language people, well that's another story.

Once upon a time I could have responded to you in perfect French, but alas, I have forgotten most of it now.

I find the "gypsy" and "roma" comments that have started appearing just a little offensive. It makes sweeping generalisations. Many of the people commenting here seem to just want to attack others. You, Dan, at least have the good grace to recognise that some might find your comments offensive and apologise - it shows that you do not intend to be offensive.

If only others could follow your lead.

@Pete West You are damn wrong buddy -- you certainly don't know anything about gypsies and how to recognize them. On the other hand, no gypsies would bother to travel that much just to do the stuff they are doing in Europe... they're simply too lazy for that. Don't equal Romanians with Gypsies, it will only disqualify yourself.

I am Romanian. I don't live in NZ and I have no intention to do that. It is somethink that i don't understand about immigration politics in your country. From my point of view to accept immigrants from East European contries or West Europe it is a good immigration strategy. I mean this immigrants will not have problems to integrate in NZ society because we have the same social values, we are christian too, even our languages (romanian and english) has the same latin influences.(more or less) More than this I know one couple of romanian immigrants and if you ask theyr son about his origins, little kid declare that he is a kiwi. Regrading all say above I was surprise when I read on different public forums that east european or west european (UK or german) are sent home but muslims from "I don't know where" receive citizen cards for second or third wife. Now i hope that my comment will not be understand as a extreme right statment and if somebody fell unpleasant about this I hope will accept my apologise....but simply I don't understand this politics. ...and about kiwi being lazy...I was worked in UK with couple of guys from NZ and it was realy hard for me to work with the same speed like this guys. Probably if a kiwi say that other kiwis are lazy this probably is true but NZs guys from my team was verry hard workers.

Last..for comma hunters and other grammar fanatics i accept your comments if will be write in french or german....and will be with no grammar mistakes. TNX.

Leave the effing Romanians in - in no time we'll have the same issues as France, Italy and Spain - robberies, begging, prostitution, the whole lot.

@Rex: I really see what you mean. I am sure they are really lovely people, but they do have to shoulder some responsibility for their situation.

I do in part agree with people saying that they should have been aware of when their visa expired, and shouldn't have had to rely on a reminder letter.

I too question the skills shortage issue. But still, these people demonstrate a willingness to do well for themselves and their community. Perhaps many Kiwis could learn from them a little. :-)

I am writing this from the Netherlands. Looking at the photo my quess is that these people are Roma, gypgies. Now if you follow the news a bit regarding things that happen in Europe you will know that hundreds of Roma have been send back from France to Romania. Nearly all the homerobberies at the moment in Holland, Belgium and Germany are done by Roma people. Romania is only too glad that these people leave their homeland. Where ever they settle, problems do occur. Living of wellfare handouts, busy with computer fraud and so on.

Oh yes, kick them out for being hardworking yet let thousands of islanders park here leeching off our welfare system? And I'm not exaggerating at all - it's fricking happening and it's beyond exasperating

Can't wait to get out. #47 - nah - just back from 8 yrs in oz. nz is the place to be!

So many people from overseas trying to relocate to NZ, while most people I know from NZ are trying to get out as fast as they can.

Last June we called for a public meeting on what we saw happening with migrants on temp visas, our community organisation was flooded with skilled people finding themselves in very similar situations.

MP's, Immigration Officials, Service providers (from the public & private sector), and many other attended this urgent meeting. We requested that Immigration Ministers Coleman and/or Wilkinson attend - sadly not one mp/minister from the current Govt showed up!

The Mp's that did attend requested a meeting with Minister Coleman to take their findings......he refused to meet with them (twice)

You may remember the Kemp Family from Scotland and the Schoeburgers from Germany....this family of five slept on our office floor as they had no way to go and ran out of money. After our intervention we managed to get this family on a plane back to Germany.

We (a family of 5) took in a skilled migrant family of 4 when redundancy hit, They were ordered to leave NZ by immigration and appealed......which they won. I can confirm that the company that originally made him redundant re-employed him 11 months later.

This family lived with us for 8 months, they are now happily being a normal family in their own place, working hard and paying their taxes, residency is being processed and the employer is trilled that he was able to get the skilled worker he needed when the jobs came back into his company.

As i said in a previous post in 2008 85% of people granted residency were already here on a temp visa. I think the system needs looking at to make sure employers get the staff they need and migrants are less vulnerable.

Tammy - www.move2nz.com