Immigration case backlog revealed
Nearly half of the 11,000 migrant exploitation and fraud tipoffs sent to Immigration New Zealand in the six years to 2017 were not investigated.
Fewer than 150 prosecutions resulted from the 5700 cases investigated.
Almost 500 cases, some four years old, remained open, according to figures released under the Official Information Act.
Immigration Minister Iain Lees Galloway said seeing the numbers for the first time last year opened his eyes to the challenges immigration enforcement faced.
‘‘I am even more aware now of the situation we have inherited and the need to work quickly to address it.’’
Cases that were investigated by Immigration mostly involved migrant worker exploitation, people smuggling, forged applications and partnership visas.
Immigration New Zealand assistant general manager Peter Devoy said he did not expect the revealing of Immigration’s investigation and prosecution rate history to dent confidence in the agency.
‘‘We are never going to get to the situation of being able to investigate everything. That is going to be a fact. We have to triage the work and look at what we can do.’’
In 2016, Immigration received 1000 more allegations than the year prior. The spike in volume resulted in 1363 investigations, the highest number in years.
The investigations led to 22 people being convicted last year, 10 fewer than in 2015.
Devoy said only so many prosecutions could be brought.
‘‘Prosecution takes a lot of time, effort, the high-end cases are resource-intensive and they are time-intensive.’’
Immigration had 64 compliance and investigation staff in June last year, 20 more than in 2012.
More than 5250 complaints made to the agency were not investigated between 2011 and 2016.
Devoy said this was because allegations were often made anonymously and lacked detail.
‘‘We get a whole range of reports. Any number of these reports are anonymous and quite often, while we might be slightly aware of a situation, identifying anything which might be evidential from the report and being able to follow that up is difficult.’’
The agency’s focus was to crack down on people trafficking, but this was difficult because prosecutions had to be approved by the attorney general.
Lees-Galloway said there would be changes in immigration, but he did not wish to discuss resources and funding before Budget 2018 announcements.
His priority was to foster a culture where migrant worker and student exploitation was not tolerated.
‘‘Everyone needs to know that we won’t allow the exploitation of migrant workers here.’’