Gill Bonnett (RNZ)
Auckland, March 30, 2024
Fraudulent overseas agents are contacting New Zealand employers to sell jobs and visas and some have taken up the offer, according to experts in the immigration industry.
Immigration Advisers want a crackdown on employers who are in ‘business partnerships’ with overseas recruiters who are selling jobs.
New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment (NZAMI) has said that fake visas are also circulating, including one that appears to show the signature of US star Oprah Winfrey.
Hundreds of companies that used the Accredited Employer Work Visa Scheme have either been blacklisted or are being investigated for a variety of scams and exploitation.
Editor’s Note: The Accredited Employer Work Visa Scheme, implemented on May 23, 2022 by the previous Labour government aimed to ensure that New Zealanders are first in line for jobs and made it easier for employers facing genuine skills or labour shortages, to hire skilled migrants. The Scheme was aimed at combating migrant exploitation by ensuring that employers who are accredited can hire migrant workers. In essence, the ACWVS is the main temporary work visa scheme but a new, employer-led work visa process to be followed to hire migrant workers. All applications are made through Immigration New Zealand online. Submitted applications go through an automated check process including medical, character and Police) before they are processed by an Immigration Officer. There have been complaints of flaws and fraud.
The Serious Fraud Office has said that it would not confirm or deny if it has received complaints or opened an investigation to protect the maintenance of the law and the right to a fair trial.
Overseas agents outside the law
Auckland-based Immigration Adviser Brandon Han said that overseas job-selling agents were operating out of reach of New Zealand legal consequences.
“I have also been contacted by agents from overseas so many times, and they offer me huge money and ask whether I have any employment opportunities to sell. I have heard that many New Zealand employers have been contacted with offers of money and business partnerships,” he said.
Mr Han did not mention any names of overseas agents or his clients but was speaking to highlight the deficiencies in the system. Most of the advisers in his network had also been contacted by overseas recruiters in the same way.
He said that the demand from migrants willing to pay for work made job-selling extremely lucrative, and it is not illegal in some countries.
“In China, you register to operate as an overseas recruiter. The government allows this to happen and leaves the pricing entirely to the free market,” Mr Han said.
He had heard that in some cases, another organisation facilitated the sale of jobs.
“It is like a middleman who created a company overseas to avoid New Zealand’s legal obligations and then created a bridge between the New Zealand employer and the large overseas recruiter. So you can see how the production line works,” he said.
A flawed Scheme
Critics have said that the AEWV scheme, introduced during the Covid pandemic, had very little checks and allowed migrants to buy jobs and be exploited.
Mr Han said that the underpayment of workers was continuing and that some migrants were complicit in cheating the system.
“For instance, they make up stories to apply for refugee status. This is an example of asylum claim abuse. A middleman approached me with many Chinese migrant workers ready to go on this path,” he said.
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford spoke to RNZ about a 70% increase in asylum claims in the past few months and that the government will slash these numbers.
NZAMI Chair Arunima Dhingra agreed that some migrants knew when their visa was fraudulent. She said that there has also been an increase in reports of fake visas, including one that used the logo of Former Associate Immigration Minister Poto Williams and a signature claiming to be from Oprah Winfrey.
“I thought, well, if you were a migrant, you would need to use some common sense. You know that if you are paying thousands of dollars for something you are starting on the wrong foot in the first place. I sympathise with a lot of migrants that get taken for a ride, but to be honest, many will come here knowing that it is wrong, but works for them and therefore they will take it anyway,” she said.
An opportunity for correction
Ms Dhingra said that immigration advisers and lawyers had foretold the fraud problems, and now want to help the government to fix them before companies apply for re-accreditation this winter.
“Immigration and the government have now a golden opportunity and a very tiny window to weed out the employers that should not be accredited,” she said.
Legal action is being taken against one New Zealand-based immigration adviser, who faces charges of providing false or misleading information.
INZ said that job-selling was an offence under the Immigration Act and employers could face compliance and enforcement actions penalties.
“Immigration New Zealand only operates within our on-shore jurisdiction which means that we have limited legal jurisdiction on parties who are acting illegally overseas,” Compliance and Investigation Manager Steve Watson said.
“Job-selling is an offence in New Zealand as it falls under the migrant exploitation provisions under section 351 of the Immigration Act 2009. If an employer is found to have exploited any migrants, then they can be held to account through a variety of compliance and enforcement actions. The Labour Inspectorate also investigates and holds to account employers and organisations engaging in migrant exploitation,” he said.
Make it a criminal offence
Immigration lawyer Richard Small said that the elephant in the room has been ignored for years and that there was a need to make job-selling a standalone criminal offence.
“Wages protection is a civil matter only, and that will not scare off the people making thousands of dollars from these migrants. There is a hardcore of New Zealand employers who are docking the ticket and sadly, even some advisers who have built their business model on job selling,” he said.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has received 2384 complaints against accredited employers, of which 180 employers have been disabled to recruit migrants while 183 more investigations are in progress. The Ministry is currently assessing 47 employers to revoke their accreditation and 64 employers have been suspended.
More checks have been introduced on businesses, jobs and migrants to address the problem of the fraudulent scheme but that has also increased visa processing timeframes.
Employers are being told that INZ was trying to make improvements but has asked that officials be allowed at least six weeks for processing visas, in addition to six weeks for accreditation and another three weeks for job checks.
Gill Bonnett is a Reporter at Radio New Zealand. The above Report has been published under a special agreement with www.rnz.co.nz
