How INZ is enabling a ‘huge immigration scam’

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.

DISCLAIMER: This article does not constitute immigration advice. Individuals need to seek personal advice from a New Zealand licensed immigration adviser or lawyer to assess their unique situation. Ankur can be contacted at info@visamatters.co.nz.