Immigration adviser censured for ‘deliberately deceiving’ overstayer

An immigration adviser has been censured, fined and temporarily banned from getting another l i cence after “deliberately deceiving” an overstayer and her family into thinking her visa application was in hand.

Christopher Mark McCarthy took $4000 from a client in 2018, who wanted to help her daughter-inlaw’s legal status in New Zealand. The daughter-in-law, who cannot be named, has now overstayed for several years, all the while thinking steps had been taken to advance her case for getting the right visa.

The Immigration Advisers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal said McCarthy’s actions amounted to “serious misconduct”, after he had deliberately deceived his client into believing a request for a visa had been made to

Immigration NZ, when it hadn’t.

The deception has resulted in serious consequences for the complainant’s daughter-in-law, who was already unlawfully in NZ at the time McCarthy was hired.

“The longer the daughter-in-law was in New Zealand unlawfully, the more difficult it became to regularise her situation,” the tribunal said.

The woman and her partner, on whose behalf the action was taken, are uncertain about their future.

McCarthy was a licensed immigration adviser until April this year when his licence expired. He was also director of a business that specialised in immigration.

The complainant and her son engaged him in about December 2017 to help the complainant’s daughter-in-law get the appropriate visa. Four months l ater McCarthy wrote to the complainant, recording his instruction to seek a visa. The complainant paid him his requested fee of $4,025.

A year later McCarthy advised the complainant’s son, after email exchanges, he was putting together the section 61 visa request.

In October 2019 the son was told by McCarthy there had been no update, but that he would be in touch again soon.

The tribunal said in its decision that McCarthy appeared to have stopped communicating with the family in November 2019.

“The family continued to ask him about the status of the request they thought had been made to Immigration NZ. This went on until 27 February 2021. There was no reply from him.”

In April 2021 the son contacted Immigration NZ and was told his wife’s visa had expired in March 2006 and no section 61 request had been made.

A complaint was lodged with the Immigration Advisers Authority. In June 2021 McCarthy said in response he had “largely failed to act” but gave no explanation to either the authority or the tribunal.

The tribunal has found McCarthy was unprofessional and lacked diligence, and his communication in October 2019 was “deliberately misleading and deceptive”.

He was censured, prevented from reapplying for any licence for two years, ordered to refund the client’s $4025 and to pay the complainant $6025, of which $2000 was compensation and the rest a penalty.