The series
Visa and school fraud Student exploitation Effect on immigration looking towards the future where they thought they would do something better.”
The Employment Court ruling is the latest in a flood of migrant worker exploitation cases which prompted the Government to introduce tougher sentences for rogue employers last year. One Indian woman was forced to pay her boss $14,400 for a job in a Christchurch restaurant to secure her work visa and permanent residency application. A Wellington grocery store forced an Indian man who needed a visa to pay $10,000. And in perhaps the most high profile case, bosses at the Masala Indian restaurant chain in Auckland were found guilty of underpaying and exploiting workers, who were paid as little as $3 an hour in the hope of securing a visa and residency.
The cash-for-job scam is now so common that Immigration New Zealand is investigating 55 possible cases. Anderson says the going rate for a “job letter” in Auckland is $20,000 to $25,000, but she has heard of payments of up to $40,000.
Researchers say evidence has been building for years that foreign students are working in substandard conditions in the hope of winning long-term residency. A 2011 thesis found 42 per cent of Chinese international students were paid below the minimum wage, compared to only 7 per cent of domestic students.
In 2012 an undercover AUT report led by Anderson revealed 93 international students were working illegally in Bay of Plenty orchards while almost half supposedly studied business, IT and cookery courses at private training establishments (PTEs) in Auckland. The mainly male Indian students were paid only $8 to $11 an hour for up to 55 hours a week, breaching both the minimum wage and their student visa, which allowed them to work only 20 hours a week.
In April a University of Auckland survey of 891 temporary migrants — including 457 international students — found about 20 per cent admitted being paid less than the minimum wage. For those in accommodation and hospitality, the figure rose to 44 per cent.
Author Dr Francis Collins argues that New Zealand’s immigration policies have created the environment which makes students vulnerable to exploitation. In the 1990s, he says, international education was dominated by short-term courses at language schools for students who left soon afterwards. Successive governments realised they could entice more students to come — and bring more money into New Zealand — by allowing them to work for up to 20 hours a week and pitching the courses as a pathway to immigration.