Gill Bonnett
Wellington, May 28, 2021
The government has spent $112,000 out of $900,000 allocated to repatriate migrants who could not afford plane tickets to fly back to their home countries, Budget documents show.
While borders remained closed, the government also spent $11 million on attracting migrants to come here.
It has also emerged that the government spent almost $250 million in plugging a black hole in Immigration New Zealand (INZ) visa account finances.
Budget 2021 recorded the $242 million spent in February to “reduce the accumulated Covid-19 related deficit,” which still leaves $56 million deficit.
INZ in the Red
INZ visa account was already $58 million in the red before borders closed last year but more than doubled in the following four months and continued to grow.
Budget documents show that the government spent $900,000 in the current financial year on “repayable financial assistance to foreign nationals on temporary visas in need of support to return home.”
Radio New Zealand has asked how much of the money has been repaid.
When the repatriation scheme emerged in September 2020, INZ stressed that the money will have to be repaid if immigrants want to return to New Zealand in the future. Those who would be eligible included workers made redundant and visitors whose funds had run out, and who could not get help from other sources such as their embassy.
Overseas offices closure
The Budget figures show that $11 million will be spent in the next financial year on attracting migrants to come here. Another $19 million in funds allocated for travel costs in the migrant attraction budget was last year re-purposed.
The figures showed that immigration spent $23 million more than budgeted last year, some on the closure of its overseas offices where staff had not been able to work during the pandemic. Offices in Mumbai, Manila and Pretoria closed this year and 329 people lost their jobs.
It is not clear from the Budget figures how much money has been set aside to refund migrants who have withdrawn their residence applications.
Almost 3000 migrants had received refunds in the 12 months to September, more than in the three previous years combined and totalling nearly $1.4 million.
That was before the Ombudsman’s ruling last month on INZ’s residence scheme, that paved the way for refunds to skilled migrants who had unwittingly joined a non-priority queue behind fast-tracked applications.
In a statement, INZ said that the immigration system was facing an unprecedented challenge in the wake of the pandemic and it was being provided with $173 million in the next financial year to replace lost third-party revenue.
Significant decrease in visas
INZ Deputy Head Stephen Vaughan said that with border restrictions remaining in place for more than a year, incoming visa volumes have decreased significantly across a number of visa categories.
“A large percentage of Immigration New Zealand’s expenditure is fixed in nature. It is therefore not possible for INZ to make commensurate reductions in expenditure to match the drop in revenue experienced as a consequence of border closures. This has resulted in significant deficits in the memo accounts. It would be unreasonable to expect future fee payers to cover this deficit,” he said in a Statement.
Visas applications fell from 1.3 million with $226 million revenue from fees in the 2018-2019 year to 500,000 applications and third party revenue of $96 million.
“There are a number of cost reduction initiatives underway at INZ including the planned closure of all offshore visa processing offices apart from those in the Pacific. INZ is also improving its technology to transition to an online, efficient, flexible and resilient visa processing system,” Mr Vaughn said.
Of the $900,000 allocated to repayable financial assistance to foreign nationals needing to return home, $112,000 of the fund had been spent. A $400 partial repayment had been received from one family group and two other family groups had started the process to enquire about repayment.
According to Mr Vaughn, the money to attract migrants was spent on personnel, contractors, travel, ICT and communications, equipment and occupancy, as well as professional and technical services.
Gill Bonnett is Immigration Reporter at Radio New Zealand. The above Report has been published under a special agreement with www.rnz.co.nz
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