Migrant worker lured to New Zealand with a forged job offer
The Employment Relations Authority (ERA) has dismissed the penalties sought by a Chinese migrant who was lured to New Zealand by a fake job offer in 2023.
The migrant entered New Zealand under an accredited employer work visa (AEWV) in May 2023, which stated he would be working for an employer as a handyman.
He applied for the work visa using a "job check" provided to him by a China-based immigration agent, who was paid RMB80,000 (or around NZ$18,000) for the services.
A job check is a process that helps Immigration New Zealand verify that a job is genuine and that an employer has made an effort to recruit locally.
The migrant worker arrived in May 2023 and was fetched by a man who charged him $200 to transport him to a residence in West Auckland, where he lived with other construction workers in accommodation that cost $130 per week.
He lived in New Zealand for more than two months without income, living off personal savings, while attempting to find his employer's contact details through his immigration agent, who refused to give the information.
He was later told that he needed to find a job on his own, as his agent told him that the employer was only providing the visa token and not employment.
"[This] made him feel cheated and helpless, especially as he had paid [the agent] RMB80,000 for his services," read the ERA document.
The migrant worker only found out about his employer's identification after several months, following a privacy request to Immigration New Zealand (INZ).
He then applied to INZ for a Migrant Exploitation Protection Visa, which was granted and expired in November 2024.
He also asked the ERA to investigate claims of unjustified dismissal, unjustified disadvantage, and an application for penalties against the employer.
However, the respondent in the case said he did not know about the migrant worker until several months after he arrived in the country.
By the time he found out about the migrant, the employer offered him a job in Rotorua, but it was turned down as he was already working for someone else.
The respondent acknowledged that his immigration agent sent a job check to a third-party email address in China but did not hear back from them.
But he was "adamant" that the company did not provide the migrant worker's agent with an individual employment agreement, and that the migrant worker did not undergo a job interview.
The ERA sided with the employer in the case, accepting that there was no employment relationship between both parties because they did not know of each other's existence until several months after the migrant's arrival.
The ERA said the employment agreement on the INZ file may have been an "accredited employer template agreement" that the migrant worker's immigration advisor re-purposed.
It also noted that INZ's AEWV approval letter did not record the actual name of the migrant worker's employer.
"Had this administrative error not been made, it may have been possible for [the worker] to speak to [the employer] sooner, who, being short-staffed, would have deployed him somewhere in the business, thus avoiding much of the financial stress and anxiety [the worker] experienced during his time in New Zealand," the ERA said.
According to the decision, the migrant worker contacted the police after returning to China from New Zealand.
However, the police told him that there was not much they could do against his immigration advisor, as he had managed to get him to New Zealand.
"This is a sad case," the ERA said.
According to the authority, the case took place because of the "low touch" Accredited Employer Instructions that simplified the process for many employers.
"However, the greater speed came at the cost of a much-reduced verification process that has allowed offshore agents and/or unscrupulous employers to take advantage of applicants," the ERA added.
The AEWV scheme was implemented in 2022 to address the growing demand for migrant labour by employers, but later reports revealed that bad actors exploited the visa scheme between July 2022 and June 2023.
A review from the Public Service Commission in 2024 later found that the AEWV did not work as intended, and that INZ should have done more to minimise the risk of exploitation happening.
"Immigration New Zealand implemented, very quickly, a new model to accelerate immigration at a time the country desperately needed skilled workers," said Deputy Public Service Commissioner Heather Baggott in a statement last year.
"While it was unscrupulous employers who exploited migrants coming into the country, Immigration New Zealand could have, and should have, done more to minimise the risk of that happening."
The New Zealand government has since introduced tighter measures to improve the AEWV system, including removing the median wage requirement and reducing the work experience requirement, among others.
