Samoans born between 1924 and 1949, now, have the right to apply for New Zealand citizenship after the New Zealand Parliament voted unanimously to approve in final reading Green MP Teanau Tuiono’s bill, Restoring Citizenship Removed by Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act 1982.
In 1978, Falema’i Lesa, a hotel cook in Wellington, was arrested by immigration officers.
They claimed she had no right to live in New Zealand.
Supported by immigration lawyers, Lesa fought her case all the way to the Privy Council, New Zealand’s highest court at the time.
In 1982, the Privy Council ruled that Samoans born between 1924 and 1948 were British subjects and, therefore, entitled to New Zealand citizenship.
But that same year, the Muldoon government enacted the Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act, which nullified the decision.
The bill passed this week by the New Zealand Parliament restores a pathway to NZ citizenship for Samoans like Lesa who were stripped of it by the Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act.
Tuiono acknowledged the rarity of an opposition MP’s bill being picked and progressing as far as it did.
A clause in the original Tuiono Bill seeking citizenship for direct descendants of the cohort of Samoans was not recommended by the New Zealand Parliamentary Select Committee report.
