Raft of horrifying scams points to a broken immigration system
Samoan ‘‘slavery’’ allegations shouldn’t be a surprise – our immigration system is rife with fraud, write Steve Kilgallon and Dileepa Fonseka.
Remember the opening scene of Once Were Warriors? A textbook image of an island paradise filled the screen, before the camera panned back to reveal it was merely a billboard in the middle of a grim urban reality.
New Zealand sells itself to the world in the same way, offering what we think is a false vision of a beautiful, incorruptible country offering a top-class education and opportunities to make your fortune.
Months investigating the visa frauds at the heart of our immigration system have left us convinced it’s broken.
We’d already made up our minds before the case emerged of alleged Samoan ‘‘slave master’’ Viliamu Samu, charged with human trafficking and slavery offences for what Immigration says was two decades of exploiting migrant fruitpickers.
We think corruption and exploitation run almost unchecked. Our newest arrivals are told fraud and graft are acceptable and unpunished. Scammers operate almost openly, safe in the knowledge they won’t be prosecuted.
Our stories initially focused on restaurateur Gurpreet Singh, who for some years appears to have run schemes where he charged up to $35,000 for visas to Indian migrants desperate to stay here. Gurpreet has operated thus far without any action from an immigration department which, by its own admission, has known some of what he was up to for four years.
But Gurpreet, if he cared at all about the exposure, was unlucky, for there were any number of other chancers out there running exactly the same operation. We also found lots of people know it goes on, and lots of people are angry about it.
After our first story, the emails began arriving, and they haven’t stopped. Lots were from other migrants trying to tell their stories. We could only investigate a fraction; and, frankly, many were the same, just with the names changed. We chased some down, and found them to be true. And in all cases, the villains hadn’t been punished – and yet we were able to establish exactly what they were up to.
The basic scams are these:
❚ The Fake Job. There’s the paperwork to satisfy Immigration and a salary paid to satisfy Inland Revenue (IRD), but the job doesn’t exist and the migrant has to return the salary in cash (and top it up for the tax that’s been deducted).
❚ The Exploited Job. Immigration and IRD are told they’re paying minimum wage and entitlements – but the migrant either returns some of their salary, or works a huge number of extra hours for free, or for cash under the table and below the minimum.
❚ The Inflated Job. The real job might be washing dishes – but when it comes to the visa paperwork, it’s a manager’s position.
We’ve talked to endless migrants who thought they would get residency and a well-paid job. Almost all studied for meaningless qualifications purely to secure visas, worked in low-paid, unskilled jobs, and were ruthlessly exploited, usually by other, earlier-arriving migrants, who drained them of their cash.
Like the allegations against Samu, some had horrifying stories, such as the fruit-picking overstayer who claimed his bosses broke his legs when he fell out of line.
And yet more emails came from regular Kiwis with tip-offs – about the healthcare industry, hospitality, supermarkets, fruit-picking, IT. Some were angry, most resigned, several had contacted Immigration and been fobbed off.
A kiwifruit orchardist wrote about migrant labour gangs paid below the minimum wage and in poor conditions and begged: ‘‘Immigration NZ needs to be much more aggressive, relentless and have the ability to impose more substantial penalties.’’
A supermarket manager wrote after our story about Gurpreet’s proposed sideline selling marriage visas, to tell us ‘‘marriages for sale’’ was a practice ‘‘rampant’’ in his industry, having seen it painfully unfold several times, with payments of up to $60,000 being made.
In industries like fast food, liquor stores, gas stations, restaurants and fruit-picking, the reality is corrupt employers have a huge business advantage by massively underpaying staff. Legitimate employers can either do the same, and compete, or stay legal, and face going bust. One insider said: ‘‘If it looks too good to be true, it is.’’ If a business is winning its sector but you can’t see why, it could be because it’s saving (illegally) on labour costs.
The cost to society? Beyond the human stories of an underclass of the underpaid and the pain for those who refuse to break the rules, there’s the loss of tax income that has an impact on us all.
Immigration adviser Malkiat Singh told us it’s become ‘‘generational exploitation’’: each wave of exploited migrants accepts the situation, and, in turn, once established, goes on to exploit those arriving after them. For some, charging for visas and fake jobs may be their main income.
Among the cases we’ve inquired into was that of a migrant who paid for a visa and a fake job, but tipped off Immigration; two years later the service investigated only after we asked them about the case.
Our conclusion is Immigration New Zealand, as it stands, is incapable of halting the tide of corruption.
Why? After years of no political priority being placed on pursuing and prosecuting offenders, they appear hugely understaffed, with fewer than 30 Immigration investigators nationwide.
Instead of chasing down every case, they’ve wisely focused on the big fish – like, allegedly, Samu. Hopefully, it deters the smaller fish; but that strategy means many go unpunished and a culture of accepting fraud has sprung up among migrant communities.
The charges against Samu are significant: frustratingly, the scammers who are caught rarely serve custodial sentences. Former immigration minister Tuariki Delamere told us only harsher penalties – including deportation – will have an impact. We agree.
There does appear some political will. Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway has made improvements to visa rules, but more could be done. He’s added resource in the Labour Inspectorate, which handles some investigations, and he’s commissioned research into Immigration’s policing of exploitation. He admits: ‘‘We have inherited a situation where we don’t really have a good grasp on the extent of migrant exploitation in New Zealand.’’
If two journalists, without the investigatory powers or resource of a government department, can unearth and expose a string of such schemes – and we’ve heard of many more – it’s clear that they are everywhere, and not hard to find. The remote prospect of prosecution has made men like Gurpreet Singh brazen.
Migrant workers in Arab countries treated like modern-day indentured slaves at least know what they’re getting themselves into. Our migrants do not. New Zealand sells a dream: a reasonably priced, high-quality education providing a pathway to a skilled job and a permanent home. Our immigration website tells them it will be ‘‘the time of their life’’.
First Union’s Mandeep Bela told us this amounted to ‘‘education trafficking’’: often it seems, the qualifications are worthless, the work they find is unskilled, underpaid and exploited. They break the law when they pay for a job – but do they have any choice? Trapped first by pride, then by debt, they stay. But it’s hardly the life they were sold – and it’s hard to find a benefit for them, or us, in their being in New Zealand.
Lees-Galloway told us he didn’t want New Zealand’s reputation overseas to be tarnished. The evidence suggests it already has been.