Immigration lawyer criticizes visa policy after claims of mistreatment of migrants
An immigration lawyer has criticized the Government's accredited employer work visa plan (AEWV) after an investigation found that dozens of migrants were living in a dirty Auckland home with three bedrooms.
Forty men living in south Auckland are said to have paid local marketers thousands of dollars for jobs, but they haven't worked or been paid. He thinks this is all because of the flaws in the new accredited employer work visa policy.
Even though McClymont didn't have any numbers to back up his claim of an "explosion" in exploitation and fraud, he said that people in the immigration business could "immediately see the flaws in the policy" when it was first implemented.
What it does is provide bad people opportunities to abuse the policy and benefit from it. Once you make changes available, it's pretty much a free for all, he told AM.
When the AEWV plan started, people in the workforce said, "This is going to be a disaster because there are so many ways for exploiters to take advantage of loopholes and flaws."
Andrew Little, in charge of immigration, said that the program began when Aotearoa's borders opened in 2022.
He said that the number of complaints went up in 2021, but he said that was because there were more ways to make complaints, such as a new dedicated 0800 number and a new web form.
Minister Little said that the AEWV started when the gates reopened in 2022. This means that the AEWV does not cause a rise in complaints.
Not all complaints to the Labour Inspectorate are about the AEWV plan, but the rise in complaints shows that workers know how bad exploitation is and that the government has set up ways to protect migrant workers.
Minister Little said that since the program started, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) has accepted more than 27,000 employer accreditations, more than 42,000 job checks, and more than 76,000 AEWVs for a wide range of jobs.
The Minister pointed out, It's amazing that almost half of all complaints about exploiting migrants now come through the new website. "This tells us that it's doing what it was supposed to do, which is to make the complaints process easier to use, and that almost certainly, migrant exploitation cases in the past were not reported enough."
McClymont said that the biggest problem with the AEWV plan is that employers can say on their own that they are good employers. He said INZ is not "doing the checks" to ensure this is true.
In his opinion, this is the equivalent as telling a ram raider, "Oh, we're going to stop ram raids by asking those who might do them to pledge they won't do anything unlawful.
As soon as the legislation was implemented, people from New Zealand and others began to see potential benefits.
He says people are taking advantage of the system by charging a lot of money for work visas because "they see that Immigration New Zealand is not checking up on the employer."
McClymont said the policy needs to be "totally changed" and "rewritten from scratch."
General Manager of Immigration Investigations and Compliance at INZ Steve Watson said it is aware of the case of "possible immigration fraud and migrant exploitation in Auckland involving a number of Indian nationals."
He said that right now, the most important thing is to help the migrants with their needs.
We can't say more now because the inquiry is just starting. However, the public must know we are not taking this lightly.
