Dear Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment,

I would like to request under the Official Information Act some statistics relating to asylum seekers. I would like to request:

* the number of asylum seekers that New Zealand has received each year since 2009.

I would like these statistics to be broken down by:

a) the country of nationality or habitual residence of the asylum seeker,
b) the number of asylum seekers (by country) who were recognised as refugees by a refugee and protection officer
c) the number of asylum seekers (by country) who were recognised as protected persons by a refugee and protection officer
d) the number of asylum seekers (by country) who were recognised as refugees or protected persons following an appeal against a decision of a refugee and protection officer

I also have two further requests that may not be so easy to answer, but I would deeply appreciate it if you could answer them:

e) it would be excellent if I could get a breakdown of successful refugee or protection claimants by reason for the decision: eg race, religion, nationality, political opinion, member of particular social group, a protected person under the ICCPR or a protected person under the CAT.
f) it would also be great if I could get any statistics on the reason why applications for refugee status were rejected: eg lack of applicant credibility, domestic protection alternative available, no well founded fear of persecution, or persecution not for a Convention reason.

I am interested in refugee law, and so I am trying to get a greater picture of those who seek asylum in New Zealand, what their reasons are, where they come from, and how successful the average claimant is.

Please feel free to contact me if I can help in clarifying my request at all. If it would be easier for me to rephrase or restrict my request then please just let me know.

Yours faithfully,

Joshua Grainger

Dear Kanika Singh,

Thank you very much for the response to my request.

However, while the statistics provided on the Immigration website are useful, they do not answer my first two questions. I did not ask for the statistics for the top ten countries: I would rather like to see information about all countries for each year since 2009.

I am happy to receive this information in the way it is presented on the RSB website: numbers of applicants listed for each country down to five applicants, and then a binary yes/no indication as to whether there were any applicants for if there were less than 5 applicants.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Grainger

Dear Kanika Singh,

Thank you very much. Your response is exactly what I was looking for. I can see you gave me even more information than I asked for: since 2004 than since 2009, and that is greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Grainger