‘Cheated’ entrepreneurs beg for residency
Migrants who uprooted their lives and families to set up businesses in New Zealand are about to be kicked out, despite investing hundreds of thousands of dollars here.
Three migrant residency applications were denied by Immigration New Zealand because they did not meet a provision added to the approval process by the former National Government.
In late 2013, long-term business visas (LTBV) were abolished. Many migrants used LTBV visas to relocate to New Zealand in the hope of being granted residency under its entrepreneur category.
Under the LTBV, migrants had to have a business plan approved by Immigration NZ before they arrived. To be granted residency that business had to be profitable within two years. The migrants who have been denied residency all met that target.
In 2014, the then-Government replaced LTBV with an entrepreneur work visa. The change required LTBV holders wanting residency to prove they had met the sales forecast in their approved business plan, as well as to post a profit. The LTBV migrants denied residency were never notified of that change.
Jan Kruit was granted an LTBV in 2013. He and his wife Margreet sold their home in the Netherlands and sent all of their belongings here to start a lawnmowing business. They left their adopted son behind.
After posting a $103,000 profit in 2015 they both applied for residency, but were denied.
Aged 70, they will be deported when their temporary work visas run out in September.
Margreet said she felt ‘‘cheated’’ by the Government.
‘‘All the problems in Europe, with the bombs, it is scaring me. My life is here and not in the Netherlands anymore. Please do not send us back. All my money is here, our investment is here, my life is here and my friends. My heart is here.’’
The Kruits were not alone. Xi Chen, called Susan by her Kiwi friends, migrated here from China with her two children, then aged five and 10.
Her export business turned a $300,000 profit in its first year and another $400,000 in its second year. But she could not handle the workload of running a business and parenting two children simultaneously, and her elder child returned to China.
Immigration NZ denied her applications for residency for her and her now 10-year-old son, saying her business was an illegitimate exporter. ‘‘[Immigration NZ] makes me feel like, ‘I just want your money but I do not want you.’ ’’
She had been granted a temporary visa but would not be able to re-enter if she left New Zealand to visit her daughter.
‘‘At the beginning I think this is a very fair country. But, now I think it is unfair.’’
Swedish business owner Maria Lundqvist gained an LTBV to bring her education business to New Zealand. Her family sold everything they owned to migrate.
She, too, posted a profit within two years but was denied residency because she did not meet the sales target provision National introduced.
Had she known they would not be granted residency, she and her husband would not have migrated here, she said. Their visas expire in August.
Immigration adviser Tuariki Delamere said the added requirement was an ‘‘immoral’’ escape clause. ‘‘[These migrants] kept their side of the bargain. They honoured and complied with what the Government required of them. However, the previous Government did not keep their side of the bargain.’’
Migrants granted LTBV visas before the sales provision addition in 2014 should not be subject to it, he said.
In an email sent to Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway and Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi on Monday night, Delamere requested the migrants’ residency applications be reassessed.
Lees-Galloway would not say whether the migrants’ residency status would be reconsidered, or if the sales provision would be altered to exclude LTBV migrants.
However, he promised the Government would act. Concerns over the entrepreneur work visa had been raised, he said.
‘‘This is but one example of the mess in immigration left by the previous Government that we’re determined to put right.’’
Former immigration minister Michael Woodhouse said the National-led Government ‘‘recognised the value of migrants’’.
He said he did not have the details to comment on the LTBV migrants’ situation.