Stranded migrants bitter and stressed.
Financial pressures, mental health stresses and battles with bureaucracy are the daily reality for the unseen thousands on work or study visas, writes Dileepa Fonseka.
Christchurch-based Russian migrant worker Alexei* can’t see a way out of the immigration mess he’s caught up in. ‘‘In my view the New Zealand Government has two faces. One face is for the world outside New Zealand. This world believes Jacinda Ardern is the kindest politician in human history.
‘‘The second face is for migrants in New Zealand. For us the Government is, sorry, our enemy. The Government treats us really bad and just doesn’t listen to us.’’
He’s not the only one who thinks that way.
While many New Zealand citizens and permanent residents are taking the opportunity for a few days of relaxation after a tough year, thousands of migrants are still struggling to cope with a pandemic which has thrown their lives into disarray.
Others in this group of nearly 200,000 people are in debt, desperate for cash, distressed their friends on work visas have been locked out, distraught at the prospect of ‘‘temporariness’’ without end, and facing severe mental strain because of the pressure they’re under.
Mehak Sehgal, 15, is spending most of her holiday wandering around the house trying not to think about her Dad.
‘‘I get really anxious during the holidays because there’s nothing to really divert my mind from it.
‘‘When I was growing up in India I was really, really close to my Dad. I used to go everywhere with him. We used to paint together . . . that’s our father-daughter thing: we paint together.
‘‘It’s just getting really hard.’’ Things got scary for her on several fronts when the border shut.
Not only was her father (who holds a New Zealand work visa) locked out of the country while visiting India, her mother lost her job, and they were both left living off food handouts from a Sikh temple until her mother’s former employer rehired her further down the line.
‘‘Here when there’s like no family and Mum has lost her job and everything, it’s just really scary.
‘‘At that point when we had to actually take food from the temple it was like ‘this is not ok’ . . . it just made me feel really sad.
‘‘I wanted to do something to help my parents, but I actually couldn’t because I couldn’t work anywhere.’’
The two haven’t been told if Mehak’s father will ever be allowed back into the country. Her mother, Vanita Sehgal, accepts the country must be protected from Covid-19, but is also beginning to criticise the unfairness of her husband being locked out while film productions and sports teams secure exemptions.
‘‘We are very responsible citizens. We would obey to each and every order, whatever the Government says, but at the same time we have some requests,’’ Vanita says.
‘‘Other people are allowed in, be it sportspeople or film crew, or nannies of film crew.
‘‘If they can get exemptions, why can’t families like us get exemptions for Christmas? If other families are celebrating, we also deserve that right to be together as a family.’’
The unfairness goes beyond temporary migrants locked out of the country. The lives of thousands of onshore migrants on temporary work and student visas were thrown into disarray when Covid-19 hit, too.
Those who lost their jobs weren’t able to switch employers or claim benefits. Their fates weren’t recorded in official jobseeker numbers. Even today we have no idea how many are still out of work.
Indications are the number isn’t insignificant. In the immediate aftermath of lockdown, Migrant Workers Association President Anu Kaloti and her colleagues were swamped with advocacy work and she says cases are still coming in.
So, while New Zealanders are enjoying their domestic holidays over the summer the migrant workforce serving them in hotels and restaurants are counting themselves lucky they get to clean floors, serve coffees and pick fruit.
‘‘There’s hardly a Christmas for these people,’’ Kaloti says.
Alexei has been a foundry worker for nearly six years. His immigration problems started well before the pandemic. According to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s briefing to the incoming Immigration Minister, there are approximately 200,000 people on work visas currently in the country and 84,000 people on student visas which carry limited work rights.
This number is so large because even though Governments of both stripes have promised to bring down immigration numbers, in reality they’ve only reduced the number of residence places available for the increasing number of temporary workers they let in.
Yet at one point the Government’s response to this included reducing the length of their work visas from 12 months to six months in response to Covid-19 with the aim of saving local jobs.
A few of these migrant workers are working jobs like the one Alexei’s in.
His occupation is so undesirable he has no New Zealand-born colleagues working alongside him. His workmates are all Russians and Filipinos.
He works at a hot, punishing site across five shifts for a total of 48 hours every week.
The schedule leaves him exhausted and these holidays he’ll be taking a break despite the uncertainty of his immigration situation.
He has found it difficult to negotiate a large enough pay rise to meet immigration requirements for residency.
And if he takes a salary bump by moving up into management, the business will be short of people at the coalface.
He knew it would be hard work before he moved here, but the rules back then were that if he worked in a particular industry and region he’d be eligible for residency if he stayed with his employer for three years.
Then, 21⁄2 years into his stay, the Labour-NZ First Government was elected and changed the rules to make it salary-based rather than skills-based and kept visas tied to employers.
Since then Alexei’s future has only become more uncertain.
‘‘I can’t plan anything because the rules are changing all the time.’’
A raft of visa changes have been pushed through. The current settings mean he’ll be able to renew his visa three times and stay here for three years before
‘‘At that point when we had to actually take food from the [Sikh] temple it was like ‘this is not ok’.’’ Mehak Sehgal, 15
Alexei’s occupation is so undesirable he has no New Zealand-born colleagues.
he has to leave for a year.
By then he’ll be older and facing having to start again in Russia.
He can apply to come back again on another temporary work visa without residency rights, but government policy might have changed again to lock him out completely.
‘‘I can’t be unemployed for one year. I have family . . . I have to work, I have to earn money.
‘‘I have a very challenging job. You have to work. You have to work and to work and work for years only to deserve in the end to be deported from New Zealand.’’
Advocates like Kaloti refer to many of the immigration announcements which are drip-fed out of government as moving migrants from ‘‘temporariness to more temporariness’’.
Alexei prefers to echo the observation of others that we’re on a ‘‘pathway to Dubai’’ when it comes to keeping a temporary workforce here in such large numbers, using their labour then not allowing them any chance to stay.
Alot of the ‘‘drip-fed announcements’’ haven’t been about adding more permanent residents, but on small extensions or exemptions at the border.
The piecemeal nature of these announcements has made it difficult for these migrant workers to get any sort of certainty around their situation – even when the announcements are positive.
International student Ravinder Sadhu has lurched from one crisis to another in order to be able to continue his studies over here.
His Dad in India lost his job which meant he had to find money to pay his tuition.
Sadhu was given an interim visa for three months until he could get his fees sorted and skipped one term because he couldn’t afford it.
Then, when he finally secured his fees by borrowing some money from friends, he was told he needed to get a visa before he could sit in class (he couldn’t have secured a student visa without paying his fees).
Study visas come with work rights, but while he was going through all of this he wasn’t able to find work because his visa of a few months meant no employer wanted to take him on for a role as they couldn’t count on keeping him on after his visa ended.
Without work, he’s been reliant on an earlier Red Cross support scheme which helped him pay for food and modest accommodation costs (he shares a single bedroom with one other person and pays $125 a week in rent).
Even with all of this he is still eight or nine weeks behind on his rent.
He thought the Government’s recently announced emergency benefit might be able to help him in the way the Red Cross did, but he was told by the Ministry of Social Development he’d need to purchase a $5000 plane ticket back to India before he could access a benefit of a few hundred dollars a week.
‘‘This doesn’t make sense at all. If I have a ticket to go back to my country then why would I need to apply for a benefit?’’ he asked them.
Javed* had the bad luck of starting a new job just as the borders closed and the country went into lockdown, but recently it has all turned out for the better.
His visa was tied to his employer and region so when he was let go he had to scramble around for a new job and find an employer willing enough to negotiate a number of immigration complications including the-then slow processing times at Immigration New Zealand.
The search for a job consumed a lot of his time. Employers would ask him to show up in person for unpaid trials so they could see how he performed.
His savings were eaten up by the high cost of air travel after the borders closed. And if he took a bus he’d still have to spend money on overnight accommodation.
Luckily he still had a $2000 holiday pay pay-out from his last job. His employer claimed the wage subsidy till June and then he just relied on access to a credit card.
After he turned up at these jobs and went through with his trial most employers would say they couldn’t hire him because he was on a short-term work visa. This crucial detail was clearly laid out in his CV.
In one case an employer told him this after he’d spent $400 on a ticket to Dunedin.
‘‘I start to struggle financially as well. Mentally I was not feeling so well. I used to think a lot because I have nothing to do and always think what’s going to happen with me.’’
Javed almost ran out of money in October, but the Red Cross helped him out with accommodation assistance and grocery vouchers with no requirement he spend his savings on a ticket home.
‘‘The guy who doesn’t have money to buy food and pay accommodation. How he’s going to buy a ticket to get the emergency benefit?
‘‘The whole point of benefit is that people are not financially capable of taking care of themselves.
‘‘If you want to help someone you don’t put them any conditions you just help them straight.’’
His search for employment ended recently after he stopped in Picton while he was on his way to another job interview on the West Coast.
He decided to wander into a hospitality business there, and spoke to the owner who seemed keen to take him on despite the complications of his visa.
Javed puts this stroke of luck down to high holiday demand. The business that employs him gets customers every day walking off the Interislander ferry, but most of his local-born competition are not keen to work the holiday shift because they want to take a holiday themselves right now.
So Javed’s on the hook for split-shifts, long hours, fussy customers, and continual work during the busiest of seasons.
And he’s relieved.
‘‘Now everything is fine because I found job and my life is back on track now.’’
*These migrants asked that their names be changed to avoid it affecting their ability to stay in the country.