Immigration Minister Erica Stanford says abuses of the accredited employer work visas system mean it has almost "ground to a halt". Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Immigration Minister Erica Stanford says a 'crack team' has been set up to work on bringing down spiralling wait times for work visas.
Employers, licensed advisers and migrant workers have been waiting more than six months for approvals for accredited employer work visas (AEWV).
Stanford told the annual Association for Migration and Investment conference in Auckland on Friday morning that the system had almost "ground to a halt" after the abuse of the AEWV scheme.
The three-gateway visa involves employers getting accreditation, having job check approvals to see there's a need for migrant staff and finally applying for the work visa.
Stanford said apart from short-term measures, the government was also looking at more fundamental changes to weed out bad employers.
"How do we make sure that the limited resources that we have, we're actually targeting the people we need to target? How do we speed it up? It means moving to a higher trust model for those who we know we can trust.
"And you know who they all are, and I think immigration know who they all are. There are businesses who've been in business for a long time, they've hired migrants for a long time. They deal with Work and Income on a regular basis.
"They do the right thing, and we've never had any issue with them, and yet we treat everyone exactly the same, and that really grinds everything to a halt."
Introducing flexibility into areas where businesses were still crying out for staff was important, she said.
"There are certain industries, certain regions, certain businesses around New Zealand that really struggle to get staff for whatever reason - there is low unemployment in their particular area, the skills they can't get, and we need to treat them slightly differently.
"But the key thing for me, is that trade-off is not going to overly complicate things."
Plans advanced for new skilled migrant visa policy
An announcement of partner work rights was expected in the next week and a new skilled migrant visa policy was "the next cab off the rank''. That would deal with categories of staff who could not get residence because their salary was not 1.5 of the median wage, they did not have a degree, or they were not in a registered occupation.
The immigration list had been used as "a dumping ground proxy" for those outside the criteria, she said.
"I am worried, though, that the time that [new policy] will take will mean we might lose people. So it may well have to be, in the meantime, that we do have to use that green list as a bit of a proxy. It's not ideaI but I will, because I know that where there are skilled people that we don't want to lose, and we're at risk of losing them."
An announcement on that was expected by the end of the year. So too, work on encouraging more international students and a replacement for the investor visa: "We had the golden goose, and now we've got the lame duck," she said of the visa used to attract wealthy investors.
Work on a manifesto pledge to introduce a renewable parent visa will start next year, she added.
Hardship possible for some visa applicants - adviser
An immigration adviser, Tobias Tohill, said Thursday's announcement from Stanford that exploited migrants could no longer get a renewal of their six-month protection visa (MEPV) was double-edged.
Migrants could not survive on visitor visas for eight months while they waited for an AEWV.
"I think it's sending a message that the migrant exploitation visa is not the golden ticket," he said. "At the same time without something else in place, it's going to leave a lot of people in hardship, because you have such long decision time frames for people who are waiting to get a work visa."
He gave an example of a migrant going to the Employment Relations Authority. "She may well succeed and get damages for all the loss of wages over many months for having been unfairly dismissed.
"She's got a migrant exploitation visa that's only going to last a few months, and without this extension anymore they're not likely to get a work visa through for the new employer in time.
"And the employment dispute might take a year or more to resolve, and then you still have to potentially chase the employer for the damages. So I do think there needs to be something to cover that gap, if it's not going to be an extension to the migrant exploitation visa."
