Neil Sands
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford plans to crack down on unscrupulous employers who exploit migrant workers, addressing abuses she said spiralled out of control when New Zealand threw open its borders after the covid-19 pandemic.
Stanford said a bill currently before Parliament will make it a criminal offence punishable by up to seven years in prison to seek a payoff from a migrant in return for a job offer.
“We’ve never had the ability to go after an employer before when that sort of premium was charged offshore, or it was charged by someone [other than the employer], or charged before employment started,” Stanford told LawNews at an TLANZ function for immigration lawyers in Auckland on Wednesday evening.
The premiums, which can amount to tens of thousands of dollars, are illegally levied by dodgy employers, migration agents or recruiters on workers who often arrive in New Zealand to find no job waiting for them.
The new offence is contained in the wide-ranging Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill (FSSI), which had its first reading on June 24 and has been referred to the Education & Workforce Select Committee.
In addition, Stanford said she was working on separate legislation that will give authorities more power to act against exploitative employers.
“There will be some things in that bill that will strengthen some of the tools that we have in our toolbox to hold people to account,” she told the TLANZ function
Stanford said the new bill would help address issues with immigration compliance resources.
“We’re proposing to make sure that we can get to employers, even if it’s been a certain period of time and the offending happened a while ago…There’s a lot of migrant exploitation and only a few of our compliance officers,” she said. “So, we’re giving ourselves a little bit more flex on timing, and we’ll take a look at some of those infringement fees as well.”
TLANZ CEO Clayton Kimpton and Immigration Minister Erica Stanford
‘Corners were cut’
Stanford said migrant exploitation escalated in the wake of the pandemic, when border controls were relaxed in the face of a massive demand for workers.
“The borders were compromised. We weren’t properly assessing risk or verifying documents because of the speed we needed people in the country, and [the previous government] was under huge pressure to get people into the country because businesses were crying out for workers,” she said.
“So corners were cut. I think you all know that, you saw that. The result was an enormous spike in migrant exploitation.
“You remember the stories of 40 Indian men in a house in South Auckland with no jobs, no money. They paid huge premiums to get here. They had no skill in the thing that they were coming to do. They didn’t speak English. It was a terrible situation.”
Stanford said when she took over the portfolio in late 2023, she ordered Immigration New Zealand to tighten its verification procedures.
Then last year she introduced a number of requirements for lower skilled migrants, including a minimum of three years’ experience in the job they were taking up (since reduced to two years) and a minimum English language requirement, which she said would help ensure they understood their rights.
“I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done in the last little while in immigration. We’ve done a huge amount,” Stanford said.
‘Under-reported and growing’
However, a report released last month by the Ministerial Advisory Group on Transnational, Serious and Organised Crime showed there is still much to do to stamp out migrant exploitation.
The group, an independent body set up to advise the government, noted that MBIE received nearly four times the number of migrant exploitation complaints last year compared with the previous year – 3,925, compared to 933.
“It is likely that serious criminal exploitation, such as people-trafficking, forced labour and sexual exploitation is under-reported and growing within New Zealand,” said the group, which is chaired by Steve Symon, a senior partner at Meredith Connell.
It added: “There are almost certainly exploited migrants in our horticulture, construction, beauty services and hospitality sectors.”
It raised concerns about the role of organised crime in migrant exploitation and said employers should be legally obliged to ensure their workers were not being exploited.
“[The group supports] requiring high-risk industries to actively identify, prevent, mitigate and account for the integrity of their supply chains, and making them subject to legal liability and regulatory enforcement similar to workplace health and safety,” it said.
Stanford urged lawyers who had concerns or suggestions for improvements in the immigration portfolio to make contact.
“I’m certainly a minister that always listens, because we want to do the right thing,” she said. “I’m very aware that I don’t know everything, so it’s really helpful when you do that because we will keep tweaking.”
Submissions on the FSSI bill close on July 28.
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