The Big Scam: Buying a fake NZ job
Fixers are charging desperate migrants up to $35,000 to secure fake jobs and questionable visas to avoid deportation from New Zealand, a
Stuff investigation reveals. Immigration NZ admits it is short of staff to combat the scams and Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway has asked for a review.
Whangarei restaurateur Gurpreet Singh secured work visas and residencies for a series of Punjabi Indian migrants who would otherwise have faced being forced to leave New Zealand.
One man, Karamjeet Singh (no relation), said he paid $35,000 to Gurpreet to secure residency and a job with a Wellington company, BC International, run by an immigration advisor named Peter Ryan.
But Karamjeet said the job was fake and he had to return his salary, while still working at an Auckland McDonald’s. He is now liable for deportation. Ryan denied any role in an immigration scam.
Multiple former clients say Singh, who has run a series of restaurants and is linked to several liquidated companies, runs a variation on a visa fraud scheme that appears rife. One of them, Harpreet Singh (no relation), said he paid $25,000. Gurpreet and his associates should be prosecuted, he said.
‘‘They need to get punished, whatever they have done,’’ he said. ‘‘They have ruined many people’s lives.’’ Stuff’s investigation found three options that had been taken up by desperate migrants – all illegal:
❚ They can pay a flat upfront fee – up to $35,000 – to ‘‘buy’’ a job and get a work visa attached to an employer.
❚ They can buy a fake job, paying purely for the paperwork, but receiving no income from their ‘‘employer’’.
❚ Or, they can secure a real job at the minimum salary required by Immigration NZ for a work visa – about $48,000 per annum – but repay some or all of it back to their employer in cash, often leaving them with less than the minimum wage.
Aamir Shah, a former lieutenant of Gurpreet’s, said the hospitality sector was rife with these scams and Gurpreet had no shortage of potential clients to place at venues.
Christchurch man Baljit Singh alleges Aamir and Gurpreet charged him $35,000 for a job at a restaurant where he had to repay the majority of his wages under the table.
A former immigration minister, Tuariki Delamere, said the schemes were ‘‘endemic’’ and Immigration NZ was doing little to stop them.
Delamere is representing, pro bono, a migrant named Damanpreet Kaur, who says she has been scammed by two different groups – one in Tauranga and one in Hamilton, both of which charged her many thousands of dollars for jobs which turned out to be fake.
Immigration lawyer Alistair McClymont said ‘‘about a third’’ of his clients were paying their employers in some form for jobs. Entire job sectors, such as horticulture, were rife with such schemes, he said.
A workers’ advocate, Sunny Seghal, said the cases uncovered by
Stuff were merely the ‘‘tip of the iceberg’’. He had spoken to many migrants who had been scammed but were too afraid of deportation or community backlash to speak out.
Seghal said whistleblowers should be given extended visas in return for providing evidence. Immigration NZ assistant general manager Peter Devoy said while they had a policy of not ‘‘unduly penalising’’ whistleblowers, it would be rewarding corruption to provide extended visas.
Devoy didn’t disagree with suggestions his department was understaffed. It was receiving an ‘‘everincreasing’’ number of tipoffs about scams.
Migrants were being ‘‘exploited up and down the country,’’ and the scams risked corrupting the business sector, Devoy said.
Lees-Galloway said he was ‘‘sadly, not surprised’’ to hear how widespread the issue was.