Article Type: Media Articles

Ankur Sabharwal is a New Zealand licensed immigration adviser and the owner of Auckland-based immigration advisory Visa Matters.

OPINION: You have lived in New Zealand for a decade and now you’d like your mother to visit for the first time. Surely Immigration New Zealand will approve her a visitor visa?

My client Madhushani Munasinghe has lived in New Zealand for 10 years. Both she and her husband are New Zealand residents, and they have a one-year-old New Zealand citizen daughter, Elina.

Madhushani’s mother, Ashoka Pathirana, was refused a visitor visa this month because of her lack of ties to her home country, Sri Lanka.

It’s part of INZ’s crackdown on people at risk of overstaying visas or claiming refugee status.

The most effective way to prevent people overstaying or claiming asylum is not to approve them a visa to travel to New Zealand in the first place.

Why INZ is being tough

There has been a dramatic increase in refugee claimants since New Zealand’s borders re-opened after the Covid epidemic in 2022.

I wrote about this in my last column, Refugee claims have exploded since New Zealand’s border re-opened.

The number of people who are overstaying their visitor visas will also have increased significantly, though INZ is not saying by how much – it claims it last estimated the number of overstayers in 2017.

In response, INZ is cracking down on people who cannot prove strong ties to their home countries, including:

• Employment ties
• Family ties
• Financial ties
• Any other personal commitments in their home country.

Because Ashoka, who is aged 54, is not working in Sri Lanka, and has only one adult son living there, INZ won’t approve her a visitor visa to visit Madhu for six months.

This is despite my client Madhushani following her visa conditions for 10 years. She and her husband Sam Remigias, a baker, were approved residence more than two years ago.

Why this is unfair

I’ll let Madhushani explain why this is unfair:

“ Sam and I both work full time and with so much effort and hope we applied for my mother’s visitor visa so that she can get to know our daughter, her very first grandchild.

“ Me and my husband would have felt comfortable if our daughter had been looked after by a family member.

“Now that we have no choice but to put our daughter into day care we feel distressed as we didn’t wish her to be looked after by strangers until she is a bit older. Our daughter is a premature baby who doesn’t do well with strangers and around many people.”

Madhushani and Sam are now considering sending Elina to Sri Lanka where Ashoka can look after her.

INZ says it was following Government policy

INZ says it was following Government policy when deciding to decline Ashoka’s visitor visa application.

Visitors need to show they have ties to their home country, or INZ will decide that they do not meet the definition of a “bona fide temporary entrant”.

But this definition also requires INZ to consider the purpose of the applicant’s visit to New Zealand – clearly, Ashoka has genuine reasons to visit her daughter, her son-in-law and her granddaughter.

“ It was heartbreaking to know that the reason to decline the visa was because my mum was not employed,” Madhushani told me.

“It’s normal in our culture to support our parents therefore me and my husband, and my brother looks after my mum as we did not want her to work.

“However, with this decision we were denied a precious time and a memory for our baby and us.”

Cruelly, applicants who are refused visitor visas receive INZ’s generic decline letter, which reads: “ After considering the information available to me, I am not satisfied that your personal circumstances demonstrate sufficient ties to your home country.”

INZ’s response

After writing this column, I showed it to INZ and asked for their comment.

INZ responded by giving two new and contradictory reasons why Ashoka’s application was declined. Neither of these reasons was mentioned in INZ’s decision letter:

1. Immigration Manager Nikunj Vithalani said no information was provided about who would look after Ashoka’s sister, who requires 24-hour care, while Ashoka is in New Zealand.
2. Jeannie Melville, Director, Visa, said INZ was aware that Ashoka’s sister was looked after in a hospital in Sri Lanka, but there was insufficient evidence provided about how this would mean that Ashoka would return to her home country after her visit to New Zealand.

INZ now says it is keen to clarify this situation and has offered to consider a Limited Visa as a priority if Ashoka reapplies.

Ankur Sabharwal is a New Zealand licensed immigration adviser and the owner of Auckland-based immigration advisory Visa Matters.

OPINION: The number of people claiming refugee status in New Zealand has exploded in the past two years, statistics released by Immigration New Zealand show.

In the 11 months to 31 May 2024, a total of 2220 people claimed refugee status in New Zealand.

Half of these asylum seekers – 1108 people – were from a single country: India.

Before the Covid pandemic, the number of refugee claimants averaged only 400 people a year.

To cope with the huge increase in refugee claimants, Immigration New Zealand’s Refugee Status Branch has taken on 14 more staff.

However, there is still a one-year backlog before refugee claimants are interviewed by INZ’s refugee and protection officers.

What’s the reason for the increase?

It’s not because more genuine refugees are coming to New Zealand.

Pre-Covid, approval rates for refugee claims were around 35%, but that rate has dropped to 21% in the past three years.

This means that in 79% of cases, INZ decides that claimants do not meet the definition of a genuine refugee (someone who has “a well-founded fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”).

I have received several calls from Indian nationals in New Zealand on temporary visas who told me they plan to claim asylum.

They had a similar profile: Young men from the Punjab region of India who claimed to support the independence movement in that region.

I was curious whether they would likely meet the refugee definition: none of them described any previous persecution because of their religious beliefs or political activism.

I asked INZ why they thought more people were claiming refugee status in New Zealand, but received no answer.

Can INZ do anything to stop people coming to New Zealand to claim asylum?

Yes, they can. INZ approved visas to every single one of those 1108 people from India who claimed asylum in the past year.

As I have explained in previous columns, INZ normally doesn’t check documents submitted with visa applications.

Immigration officers are based in New Zealand; only in 1.7% of cases do they ask their colleagues based in India or China to check documents which have been submitted with visitor visa applications. (This is an improvement since I wrote my column in May 2023, when documents in less than 1% of applications were checked.)

So INZ has approved visas to many people who claimed that they were planning to stay only a few weeks on holiday in New Zealand, but who actually intended to look for work and stay permanently.

You can be fairly confident, though, that INZ will have profiled the 2200 people who claimed refugee status in the past year – if you are a young man from Punjab in India, you might find it difficult now to be approved a visa for New Zealand.

This is borne out in visitor visa approval rates, which have dropped from 90% to 86% in the past two years (based on 550,000 applications processed by INZ).

So what if some people claim refugee status? It’s still not a huge number

Here are some reasons why we should be concerned about the increase in the number of non-genuine refugee claimants:

1. They cost a lot of money. Refugee claimants qualify for Emergency Benefits from Work & Income, and free legal aid from lawyers specialising in refugee claims. In 2000, it was estimated by INZ that each refugee claim costs New Zealand $30,000 – that figure is likely to be a lot higher now.
2. They cheat and lie to get into New Zealand, and most of them tell more fibs when claiming refugee status. They may have character issues – criminal convictions – which they are hiding from INZ. Refugees don’t have to provide police certificates from their home countries.
3. Refugee claimants are currently being granted 12-month ‘open’ work visas while awaiting their claims to be heard. This encourages more people to try coming to New Zealand to gain asylum-seeker privileges.

I agree that INZ needs to tighten up who it approves visas to … but it is now turning down a lot more visa applicants because they lack evidence of strong reasons to return to their home country after visiting New Zealand.

Unlike last year, you will now likely be refused a New Zealand visitor visa unless you have a well-paid job, strong financial ties, and/or close family members in your home country.

OPINION: By stealth, on a Sunday afternoon, the Government erected a wall to keep low-skilled migrant workers out of New Zealand.

Changes to the Accredited Employer scheme took effect immediately they were announced on 7 April – an instant wall that low-skilled workers now need to climb.

Before and After

The easiest way to explain these changes is to compare the rules before 7 April 2024 with the new rules which Minister of Immigration Erica Stanford introduced that day.

The changes affect low-skilled positions – that is, positions which are categorised as Skill Level 4 or 5 on the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) database.

These are positions such as labourers, shop assistants and receptionists.

Before 7 April

• New Zealand employers had to advertise low-skilled positions for 14 days so New Zealanders could apply for the positions
• Employers decided if qualifications or work experience – or none at all – were required for the positions being advertised
• Employers declared to Immigration New Zealand (INZ) that no suitable New Zealanders were found to be available.

Before 7 April, employers could declare to INZ that no suitable New Zealanders were available to do the work on offer and then bring low-skilled workers with no qualifications or work experience to New Zealand on Accredited Employer work visas.

From 7 April onwards:

• Employers have to advertise low-skilled positions for 21 days
• They have to list low-skilled positions with Work & Income for 21 days
• They have to explain to INZ why no suitable New Zealanders were available
• INZ will now only accept specific reasons why New Zealanders were unavailable (for example, they didn’t pass health, drug or criminal checks)
• Migrant workers need to have three years’ relevant work experience or a New Zealand Qualifications Authority-recognised Level 4 relevant qualification, or a bachelor’s degree
• Most migrant workers need to pass an English test, for example, IELTS 4.0.

Before, low-skilled workers could be approved five-year work visas; now they can only be approved two-year visas, with a potential one-year extension later.

Why the sudden change on 7 April?

Three reasons.

Firstly, there has been fraud involving low-skilled jobs in particular.

Employers had been advertising fake jobs and were still being approved “job checks” by Immigration New Zealand, which accepted employers at their word that no New Zealanders were available to fill these positions.

Low-skilled workers from overseas have paid up to $35,000 for jobs in New Zealand, only to find that the jobs were fake. They borrowed money in their home countries to pay for those jobs.

My guess is that thousands of people are in similar circumstances. They will stay here to earn money to pay back what they owe.

Some will stay unlawfully and work for cash. Others will claim refugee status in order to be approved 12-month ‘open’ work visas, a recent trend that I have observed.

Fake ads

The second reason for the change? Many employers have only pretended to consider New Zealanders for the positions that they are offering – their real intention is to hire people from overseas.

Even when the jobs are real, New Zealand candidates are missing out.

The third reason is that there are just too many low-skilled migrant workers in New Zealand right now.

“Last year, 20,000 people went on the benefit – at the same time, we brought in 52,000 low-skilled workers,” Erica Stanford told Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report on 8 April, explaining the reasons for the changes.

Most of these 52,000 people are from countries like India and China where they can earn far less … how many of them will be willing to leave now that they are here?

Pity the genuine employers

In the meantime, genuine employers with real vacancies will suffer under the new regime.

Remember, while unemployment is sitting at 4%, there are still places in New Zealand where employers genuinely can’t find workers, skilled or otherwise.

While the Work & Income listing process is similar to the one used previously under the Essential Skills Work Visa regime, low-skilled visa approvals will now take about six months.

After advertising and listing positions with Work & Income for 21 days, employers will need to wait two months for INZ to approve their “job check” application, then wait a further three months for the migrant worker’s Accredited Employer work visa to be decided.

These INZ processing times also apply to higher-skilled positions such as carpenters, tilers and mechanics.

Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.

OPINION: I’m calling it – Immigration New Zealand is our worst-managed Government department.

An 80-page official report details the massive blunders INZ made in approving work visas to thousands of people with fake jobs in New Zealand.

From mid-2022 to mid-2023, INZ simply waved migrants through our borders on empty promises that they were coming to work in genuine jobs for genuine employers.

So, what happened?

It is clear from the report that INZ was poorly prepared to implement the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) scheme when it opened in May 2022.

Here is a list of the eight worst blunders that INZ made in implementing the AEWV scheme.

Blunder No 1: Tight time targets

Before the scheme opened, INZ committed to taking two weeks to decide employer accreditation applications, as well as applications for “job checks” (approvals for employers to hire workers from overseas).

It was only possible to meet these targets if INZ made almost no checks on the employers or the jobs they were offering.

That is what happened.

Blunder No 2: INZ underestimated the number of applications it would receive.

INZ always does this. Always.

Blunder No 3: INZ’s new computer system wasn’t able to process applications for 10 days

Within three days of opening, INZ had received 1151 online applications for employer accreditation through its new ADEPT computer system.

However, it took 10 days after the employer accreditation scheme opened until ADEPT was able to process the applications in its system.

Instant backlog.

Blunder No 4: Staff weren’t familiar with the new computer system, so it took longer to process applications

Well, you would expect that – wouldn’t you?

Blunder No 5: INZ panicked, and let its guard down

Because there were more applications than INZ had anticipated, and they were taking longer to process than INZ expected, its promised two-week processing times were not being met.

INZ was under pressure from employers and the Government to meet those targets, so it stopped checking applications. A General Instruction was sent to staff which limited:

• checking of the employer regarding the acceptability of the employment;
• the requirement to calculate remuneration;
• the requirement to determine the genuineness of job vacancies;
• the requirement to determine that employers had genuinely tried to find suitable New Zealanders to fill positions offered to workers from overseas.

The review report writers were flabbergasted that INZ gave these instructions without assessing the likely risk of not checking.

Blunder No 6: INZ suspected that it was being ripped off, but carried on regardless

By February 2023, INZ had sampled 1225 approved applications, and found that 83 of them (6.8%) showed signs of not being genuine.

This rate was considered to be “within risk tolerances” and comparable with historical levels.

Why is this dumb? Because the 6.8% of fraud that is occurring increases exponentially unless you do something about it. It just tells the fraudsters “You’re getting away with this, and you can carry on getting away with it.”

Blunder No 7: INZ’s staff told their managers that INZ was being ripped off, but they were ignored

INZ had two systems of staff feedback called “No Surprises Fact Sheets” and a question-and-answer forum known as “Ask Me Anything”.

Multiple staff raised issues with INZ managers, such as:

• employers receiving accreditation despite being ineligible;
• migrant workers arriving in New Zealand and not getting paid;
• migrant workers concealing the fact that significant fees had been paid to secure their jobs and their visas;
• businesses applying for incorrect accreditation categories; and
• employers using the AEWV scheme for horticulture and agriculture work, which was not allowed.

Staff told the review team that they did not know what happened to submitted No Surprises Fact Sheets. Where they did receive responses to issues raised, staff told the review team that they felt INZ managers’ responses were dismissive and that issues raised had been “swept under the carpet.”

Listen to your staff: it’s Management 101, isn’t it?

Blunder No 8: The new computer system kept changing

Regular readers of my columns may recall INZ’s $57 million IT disaster called ADEPT.

The report stated: “ADEPT was changing constantly as bugs were fixed and new functionality was added.

“Changes were poorly communicated, often ‘last-minute’ and without clear rationale, leaving staff with little or no time to prepare and a lack of understanding of the reason for the change or its impact ahead of working with the changes in the system.

“The constant change, coupled with constantly changing documentation, caused confusion and stress amongst staff.”

It got so bad, that, in order to process Accredited Employer applications using ADEPT, staff had to give wrong answers, pretending that checks had been completed when they hadn’t been.

By this stage, INZ managers had told staff that checks weren’t necessary – but ADEPT was still requiring them.

At the end of the day

So, at the end of the day, how many people entered New Zealand having paid for their job offers, for jobs which weren’t actually genuine?

And how many migrant workers are still being exploited in New Zealand?

Radio New Zealand has reported that, as of December 2023, 1552 complaints had been made against Accredited Employers where one or more migrants reported instances of exploitation.

The review report quotes New Zealand’s Migrant Survey, where 8 percent of respondents said they had not received minimum pay or holidays, or had been asked to pay for their jobs – this could equate to around 20,000 migrant workers being exploited.

Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.

OPINION: It’s easy to tell when Immigration New Zealand staff are working under pressure – the mistakes pile up.

Look at what’s happening with student visa applications right now.

Firstly, many people who lodged student visa applications before Christmas heard nothing from INZ until last month.

INZ is only now picking up these applications for the first time – these are people who need to begin studying within the next two weeks.

What happens when INZ is in a hurry

If you are outside New Zealand and your case officer finds something they don’t like about your application, they will spend a few minutes looking at your application, then send you a decline letter.

The decline letter often won’t tell you the real reason that you have been refused a visa.

Here’s an example.

One of my clients received a decline letter last week which told him that INZ didn’t accept that he had enough money to pay for his studies in New Zealand.

The letter said that “either” the applicant’s father had not provided sufficient evidence of required funds “or” the father did not meet one of INZ’s other requirements for a sponsor.

This vague kind of explanation is known as a “template decline letter”, and it is becoming more and more common. You read it, but you still don’t know why INZ is refusing a visa – it could be one reason, or it could be another.

This doesn’t meet INZ’s own guidelines, which require decision-makers to give actual reasons for a decision.

INZ takes short-cuts

I have written previously about INZ’s practice of accepting documents at face value, without checking them.

Only 1% of visitor visa applications are checked by INZ verification officers, and 3% to 4% of Accredited Employer work visa applications are checked, INZ has told me previously.

Now that INZ is under pressure to decide applications, case officers take even more short-cuts.

One of my clients is applying for a work visa.

He received a letter last week saying that his overseas work experience evidence – pay slips, tax returns and an employment letter – were “not independently verifiable”, and so his case officer had decided they were unacceptable.

This means that the INZ case officer was not willing to check my client’s work experience documents with his employer or with the Indian tax department.

And INZ makes more mistakes

The other symptom of INZ working under pressure is that case officers make more mistakes.

Recently I received a letter from INZ incorrectly assessing my clients’ Parent Category resident visa application.

I explained repeatedly to the case officer the errors she was making in immigration law, but she ignored the points I was making and insisted she was right.

It was only after I took the matter to higher authorities that a technical adviser in the case officer’s own INZ branch intervened, accepting that I was correct and the case officer was wrong, which led to this Parent Category application being approved.

I haven’t received any apology from the case officer. Why didn’t she simply ask the technical adviser sitting nearby for his advice, rather than insisting that her incorrect opinion was the right one?

The officer advised that I could lodge a formal complaint if I was not happy with her response, so I have taken her up on her offer.

INZ approves applications without checking, too

You can be sure that, if INZ is refusing visas without properly checking, it will also be approving visas without checking.

Last year, INZ issued hundreds of “Recovery work visas” with fake New Zealand job offers, without checking whether the job offers were genuine.

INZ was in a hurry then as well, because these were people who were meant to be helping with the clean-up after Cyclone Gabrielle in February.

One of my clients told me last week that he paid 900,000 rupees (about NZ$17,600) to an agent in India for a job offer which he discovered was fake after he arrived in New Zealand.

Last month, INZ sent him a letter saying he does not meet the character requirements for a further temporary visa because of the fake job offer that was submitted with his work visa application last year.

INZ is a soft target for scammers when it doesn’t check clients’ first visa applications.

It is too late once the clients are already in New Zealand – many will disappear into the black economy once INZ refuses their second visa application.

Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.

OPINION: This column is about my clients Raj and Manjit*, who married in 2022, and Sonia, Raj’s ex-wife.

Raj is a New Zealander. His first wife, Sonia, came to New Zealand from India two months after their marriage in 2015.

Soon after Raj and Sonia began living together in New Zealand, there was conflict. The couple separated in February 2016, but continued seeing each other.

Sonia applied for a protection order in 2018, claiming that Raj had abused her physically, psychologically and sexually.

For his part, Raj denies abusing Sonia and claims that her allegations are made up. Although the police were called to intervene between them, Raj was never charged with any crime. The temporary protection order against him was discharged, and Raj and Sonia divorced later in 2018.

Raj began a new relationship with Manjit in 2022. The couple married in October last year and Manjit came to New Zealand on a visitor visa in March 2023. On her application form, she declared Raj as her husband.

After arriving in New Zealand, Manjit applied for a work visa as Raj’s partner. During Immigration NZ’s processing of this application, INZ told Manjit she cannot be approved on any partnership-based visa, because Raj is not an eligible supporting partner.

Raj is banned for life from supporting Manjit’s visa applications, because – unknown to both of them – Raj’s ex-wife Sonia had been approved residence under the Victims of Family Violence (VFV) category.

How could this happen?

In approving a VFV application, INZ can accept a statutory declaration from a victim of family violence as evidence that violence has occurred. Two further statutory declarations are required from professionals such as social workers, doctors, nurses or staff members of women’s refugees.

But INZ never asks the so-called perpetrator of family violence his side of the story. It’s a safety issue, INZ told me.

So, it is quite possible – even likely – that a New Zealander such as Raj will only find out that he is banned from supporting a new partner once his new partner applies for a visa.

Is this fair?

It’s fair to prevent New Zealanders from bringing a new partner to New Zealand if they abused their last partner.

But Manjit is also a victim here.

Manjit’s relationship with Raj is genuine and stable. She came to New Zealand to live with Raj in this relationship, but suddenly, her life was thrown into turmoil.

She still holds a visitor visa but can only apply for a student visa to stay longer. She may not be able to stay permanently.

If Manjit has to return to India, it will bring shame on her and her family. This is her second marriage, and she believes her community will judge her if she returns to India on her own.

What can be done?

The Ombudsman looked into this issue after receiving six complaints from New Zealanders in 2018, whose former partners had been approved residence under the VFV category without their knowledge.

In March 2021, Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier concluded that it was unreasonable for INZ not to allow former partners of VFV category applicants to comment on allegations of family violence against them.

He recommended that INZ review its policies so that New Zealanders are informed of allegations of family violence if it is safe to do so, and so that they are given the chance to rebut these allegations.

In 2021, INZ promised to review its Partnership Category – which bans New Zealanders whose former partners were approved under the VFV category from supporting further applications – but until now, the review is still “in progress”.

No options for changes have been put to any Minister of Immigration, I was told by INZ.

That needs to happen, in my opinion.

In the meantime, clients like Manjit and Raj need to ask the Minister for a “special direction” to approve an exception to the current policy.

And Manjit’s life is on hold until she knows whether she can stay living with her husband in New Zealand.

*All three names have been changed.

Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.

OPINION: What might be some of the immigration changes being discussed at the National-ACT-NZ First talks?

All three potential coalition partners put out immigration policies before last month’s election – it’s anyone’s guess how many of these policies will actually become law.

Here are some of the ones I like the look of:

Long-term visitor visas for parents of NZ citizens and residents

This was included in both National and ACT’s manifestos. Both parties proposed a five-year multiple-entry visitor visa for parents of NZ citizens and residents.

National wants parents to have ‘acceptable standard of health’ and to hold medical insurance before they are approved its Parent Boost Visa, while ACT wants to charge a $3500 annual fee to cover parents’ healthcare costs while they are in New Zealand.

Whatever the final policy looks like, it will help to reunite Kiwis with their parents. Currently, overseas parents can only stay up to six months at a time on special category visitor visas, or nine months on a general visitor visa.

National plans to attract more international students

National plans to attract more international students by increasing the number of hours they can work each week from 20 to 24.

The National Party also plans to expand work rights for international students and their partners. This may mean relaxing Post-Study work visa requirements, so that more students qualify for open work visas once they have completed a New Zealand qualification.

I support this change – one of the best ways to recruit international students is to offer work visas after completing studies. New Zealand benefits from the tuition fees they pay (up to $50,000 a year for some post-graduate courses), as well as their later contribution to the labour market.

Conflicting work visa policies

Potential coalition partners ACT and New Zealand First have conflicting work visa policies, neither of which is likely to come to fruition.

ACT wants to abolish labour market checks – that is, the efforts that New Zealand employers are required to make to hire New Zealanders before they can hire workers from overseas.

NZ First, on the other hand, wants to make it tougher to hire overseas workers.

It wants to replace the Accredited Employer work visa category with a Critical Skill and Labour Shortage Visa to ensure that Kiwi workers are at the front of the job queue.

ACT is unlikely to support that policy, but National may have more success convincing its coalition partners to remove the median wage requirement for most Accredited Employer work visas, or at least freezing it at the current level.

Most overseas workers need to be paid $29.66/hour to be approved Accredited Employer work visas, and this threshold is supposed to increase to $31.61/hour in February 2024 – the increase won’t be implemented, I predict.

New visa categories

National’s immigration policies include three new visas:

• Digital Nomad Visa, a visa allowing people who work remotely for an overseas-based employer to stay in New Zealand for up to 12 months;
• Global Growth Tech Visa, a residence visa intended to attract people with ICT skills who have worked at a top global tech company earning at least $400,000 per year; and
• International Graduates Visa, which allows graduates from one of the top 100 universities to be approved three-year work visas.

These new visas look great on paper (or electronically, if you prefer), but it remains to be seen how attractive they will be to their target audience overseas.

In the first year of these new visa categories, numbers will be capped at 250 places (Digital Nomad Visa and Global Growth Tech Visa) and 500 places (International Graduates Visa).

Two policies I’m not a fan of

I don’t like the idea of NZ First’s “rural visa scheme” which obliges migrants to stay in communities of less than 100,000 residents for two years after they have been approved residence.

Can you really force people to stay in the countryside? Maybe in China in the 1960s, but not so easily in 21st century New Zealand.

Both National and ACT want to increase visa application fees the way that Uber increases its fares when everyone wants a taxi at the same time.

ACT says: “We will get rid of the complicated and burdensome system for temporary work visas and replace it with demand-based pricing, to let employers decide if their need is worth the price instead of clunky bureaucracy.”

People who are willing to pay more for their partnership residence application to be processed first will pay up to $8668, more than three times current pricing, based on National’s proposal.

Sadly, I can’t see NZ First objecting to this.

Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.

OPINION: There is a huge immigration scam going on right now – and it is being enabled by Immigration New Zealand (INZ).

INZ’s “ask no questions” approach to the Accredited Employer work visa is leading to migrant exploitation and an influx of unqualified workers for non-genuine positions.

Now the Minister of Immigration, Andrew Little, has launched an inquiry into the way INZ is running the Accredited Employer programme.

Here’s how the Accredited Employer scam works

Tick the right boxes, and INZ will approve an employer’s accreditation application without any checks.

If an employer wants to hire six or more migrant workers, they need to apply for “high volume” accreditation.

A company which has no staff at present can easily be approved “high volume” accreditation to hire six or more migrant workers. Again, just tick the right boxes on the application form.

Next, the employer advertises the role for 14 days and then informs INZ that no suitable New Zealand candidates applied. As a result, INZ approves a “job check”, which permits the employer to hire the same number of workers they advertised for in New Zealand.

Employers don’t have to prove to INZ that they need this many new workers from overseas or that they can afford to pay them.

So INZ approves work visas to migrant workers whose positions are not genuine and sustainable. The workers come to New Zealand and get sacked within 90 days – which is perfectly legal. INZ accepts employment agreements with a “90-day trial period” clause.

Those workers have paid up to $30,000 to overseas recruitment agents – payments to recruitment agents are legal, INZ told me.

Some of this money ends up in the pocket of the dodgy New Zealand employer offering a fake job. That part is illegal.

You think I’m making this up? I’m not.

I asked INZ for statistics of the number of Accredited Employer applications approved.

They shocked me.

Thirty percent of these job check approvals stated that overseas workers do not require any qualifications or work experience to fill positions offered by New Zealand employers.

INZ has approved more than 2800 job checks to allow employers to hire workers without qualifications or work experience to work in high-skilled or mid-skilled occupations (that is, ANZSCO Skill Level 1-3 occupations).

What does this mean?

It means that INZ is willing to approve work visas to people from overseas who may not have the skills to work here.

Skilled workers such as chefs and carpenters need either a qualification or three years of relevant experience to be considered qualified according to the ANZSCO database, which INZ is meant to refer to.

Under the old Essential Skills work visa policy, INZ used to require employers to prove that they were offering genuine and sustainable positions (i.e. real jobs, which they could afford to pay for) to trained workers from overseas.

However, in the Accredited Employer category, INZ won’t look into whether a job is genuine or sustainable and won’t ask an employer why they want to hire unskilled workers to fill skilled positions or why no unskilled New Zealanders were available to fill those positions when they advertised.

INZ is doing something, though

Instead, INZ has parked its ambulance at the bottom of the cliff – it now plans to investigate 15% of Accredited Employers to find out if they are meeting their obligations.

It is also responding to complaints from Accredited Employer work visa holders.

INZ’s parent body, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), had received 694 complaints about accredited employers by May this year, so it has plenty to investigate.

What INZ needs to be doing

What INZ needs to be doing, in my opinion, is:

• Checking whether the positions offered are genuine. Why does a company which employs no staff suddenly need 10 workers?
• Checking whether a company can afford to pay for these extra workers. In many cases, it cannot.
• Requiring a reasonable level of qualification or work experience before approving a job check.
• Checking to find out whether a work visa applicant’s qualification or work experience is genuine.

These things hardly happen at present. The last time I asked, INZ told me it only verified one out of every 30 Accredited Employer work visa applications.

This is not surprising considering INZ doesn’t require any qualification or work experience in 30% of job check applications.

Come on INZ, you are meant to be preventing migrant exploitation – not making it worse.

Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.

OPINION: The Government last month announced a re-set of the Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) from 9 October onwards, reducing the points pass mark from 180 points to six points.

Currently, applicants can claim points or bonus points for up to 12 “employability and capacity building” factors. From 9 October, they can only claim points for one of three combinations:

• High employment income plus skilled work experience in NZ; OR
• High-level qualification plus skilled work experience in NZ; OR
• Occupational registration/licensing plus skilled work experience in NZ.

In a handful of cases, people with exceptionally high incomes, who have PhDs or who took six years to gain their full licence/registration won’t need to claim points for skilled work experience in NZ to be approved residence.

So, who are the winners and losers in the new SMC?

Winners: People with well-paid jobs in New Zealand

From October, only people with well-paid jobs can be approved residence under the Skilled Migrant Category. Low-skilled workers must be paid $44.49/hour (1.5 x median wage) or higher, while mid and high-skilled workers must be paid $29.66/hour (current median wage) or more.

Under the new SMC, no points will be awarded for skilled employment – it’s a core requirement for the main applicant to have a skilled job or job offer from an employer accredited by Immigration New Zealand (INZ).

INZ will still use the ANZSCO database to determine a job’s skill level, with skill level 4 and 5 (lower-skilled) roles requiring the higher pay rate.

Losers: People living overseas

Currently, people outside the country who score 180 points can lodge expressions of interest and be invited to apply under SMC. From October, that won’t be possible unless they have an offer of skilled employment in NZ from an INZ-accredited employer.

Winners: People with well-paid work experience in NZ

From October, only people with highly paid work experience in NZ, gained within the last five years, can claim points for this factor. Currently, skilled work experience from any country, gained at any time, may score points under SMC, and there is no minimum pay threshold.

Losers: People with work experience outside NZ

Under the existing SMC, people with skilled work experience outside NZ can claim up to 50 points (of the 180 points they need to be approved residence), but they will score no points for this work experience from October onwards.

Winners: People with occupational registration or licensing

Until now, claiming points for occupational registration or licensing hasn’t been possible. From October, applicants can claim between three and six points for their licence or registration if they work in an occupation which requires this.

Losers: People with diplomas and certificates

Someone with a diploma or a certificate can score 40 points for their qualification under the current SMC. From October, they’ll score zero points. Only recognised bachelor’s degrees or higher qualifications will score three to six points.

Losers: People with skilled partners

Currently, the main applicant can claim up to 40 bonus points for their partner’s qualification and employment in NZ. Under the new SMC – zero points for having a skilled partner (although they can still include their partner in their application).

What’s there to like about the new SMC?

It appears to be simpler and easier to understand, with fewer factors to claim points for.

This should help staff at INZ, who sometimes get tied up in knots deciding whether to award points for factors such as skilled employment and skilled work experience overseas.

With fewer factors to consider, INZ hopes to reduce processing times to eight weeks from five months (and two years previously).

The other thing I like about the new SMC is that it rewards people whose work experience and skilled employment are in NZ.

That is, people who have contributed to New Zealand’s labour market, and who are still contributing, will get to stay.

Most of them, at least.

People whose jobs aren’t paid highly, who don’t require occupational registration or licensing and who don’t hold a bachelor’s degree will miss out.

I’m already advising some clients with diplomas to consider upgrading their qualifications while they are working full-time – that way, they will be able to claim points for their qualification as well as their NZ skilled work experience.

Or, if people score 180 points under the existing SMC, they should lodge expressions of interest quickly – the cut-off date is 15 August.

Ankur Sabharwal is the owner of immigration advisory Visa Matters. He is a licensed immigration adviser dealing with complex immigration matters.

OPINION: In February, Reva* became pregnant in India. She came to New Zealand in March. This month, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) wrongly told her she had to disclose this to her employer.

INZ’s actions encouraged a New Zealand employer to break the law and also caused Reva anxiety and distress.

Reva, who is my client, has allowed me to share her story in the hope that INZ will not do the same to other pregnant women.

What happened?

Reva came to New Zealand on a visitor visa sponsored by her sister, a New Zealand resident.

Reva’s sister works as a caregiver in a retirement home in Dunedin. She introduced Reva to her employer, who offered Reva a job in late March. Reva works as a registered nurse in India.

In April, Reva applied for a work visa. By this time, she had found out that she was pregnant, and she declared this on her work visa application form as required.

A senior INZ officer gets involved

A senior immigration officer at INZ Manukau (who I will call Madhu) noticed this declaration and asked Reva to obtain a letter from her prospective employer confirming that the employer knew that she was pregnant.

I told Madhu that my client Reva hadn’t informed her employer that she was pregnant. At that point, Reva was in her first trimester, and she didn’t want to tell her new employer that she was pregnant.

“The female members of my family have a history of miscarriage in the early stage of their pregnancies. So it was very hard for me to decide to disclose it especially in the first trimester when the risks of miscarriage are even higher,” Reva told me.

INZ Manukau’s Madhu insisted that Reva’s employer be informed about her pregnancy.

“As per employment laws in New Zealand, potential employees are required to disclose relevant information to their potential employers that may affect them during the course of their employment,” she wrote again to Reva.

“We are concerned that … in the event the employer decides to terminate your employment for withholding information, you may not have ongoing employment in New Zealand.”

Was INZ right?

I immediately emailed Madhu at INZ Manukau, asking which employment laws were being broken by Reva not telling her employer she was pregnant.

Madhu refused to tell me, although immigration policy requires INZ to give reasons for its decisions.

“It is not my responsibility to update you with the requirements of employment laws,” she said.

I pointed out that it is illegal for an employer to discriminate against a woman because she is pregnant, and there was no legal requirement for Reva to inform her future employer that she was pregnant before beginning employment.

The idea of forcing women to reveal their “baby plans” to their employers once led former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to wag her finger angrily at a TV3 newsreader, Mark Richardson.

However, it seems that Madhu is no feminist.

“I have read all the guidelines you have sent and noted that, as per your comments, it would be illegal for the employer to terminate your applicant’s employment due to pregnancy. That is for the employer to decide.”

Madhu insisted that INZ would not accept Reva’s job offer as genuine unless she provided a letter from her employer. She had checked with INZ’s technical team (her senior colleagues), and they agreed on this point.

Reva was affected by INZ’s unreasonable actions

INZ’s requirement for Reva to obtain a letter from her employer confirming they were aware of her pregnancy affected her health physically and psychologically, she told me.

“I noticed a sudden change in my appetite and had no desire to eat or do anything. My body felt exhausted most of the time and I found it harder to sleep at night. At many times, my heart was beating faster than usual and my blood pressure dropped,” she said.

How did it end?

Reva’s employer provided her the letter and INZ approved her a work visa.

Reva is now bravely complaining to INZ and the Human Rights Commission about her treatment during INZ’s processing of her work visa application.

More than an apology, she would like INZ to train its staff about pregnancy discrimination so that other migrant women aren’t treated like she was.

* Not her real name.