Dozens of Chinese migrant workers jobless after coughing up thousands for visas
Dozens of Chinese migrant workers are being left jobless and out-of-pocket after paying thousands of dollars for work visas, only to be given no work or dismissed by their employers shortly after they arrive in New Zealand.
Most of them have come into the country on the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) scheme, which started in July last year and was designed to help reduce exploitation. It required companies hiring overseas workers to show paperwork proving they were good migrant employers.
The visa abuse has been noticed by multiple agencies, including Immigration New Zealand (INZ), the Chinese Embassy and several community service groups.
INZ said 63,075 visas were approved under the scheme between August 2022 and May this year.
What’s that you say?
More migrant workers exploited in NZ?
No!
Really?
Since 2013, there have been over 405 workplace deaths in NZ.
There are only 550 Worksafe Staff for a working population of 448 000.
There are only 37 inspectors of rental properties for 300 000 terrible rentals.
There are only 82 labour inspectorates who are supposed to police hundreds of thousands of migrant worker exploitations!
With such lax enforcement, NZ will always exploit migrant workers because our deunionised economy is based on exploiting low wage labour!
There is a cultural class dimension of the ram raids and the Dairy violence we are seeing that is rarely investigated.
You have migrant Indian and Chinese workers working in Dairy’s and Bottle shops, many exploited by other Indian and Chinese permanent residents in NZ who are being violently assaulted and attacked by angry and alienated Polynesian and Māori youth who are the legacy of Key’s kids in cars and whose families were thrown out onto the streets thanks to the flawed Meth testing of State Houses while the white middle classes gasp in the suburbs (safely ensconced in their work from home privilege) demanding ‘something must be done’.
We will continue to exploit migrant labour and nothing and no one will stop it because this is NuZilind and the free market has no master except venal self interest.
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Why are the corrupt agents here in NZ not being stripped of their right to be here and deported? *crickets chirping*
Because without migrants to exploit, we would have to actually look at the failings in our economic system and then we might be forced to actually fix the issues that are destroying our society. But you know that already.
That’s why we need more of them, once they get wise to the game, they become harder to exploit.
Not hard to see what team Labour is batting for now is it.
There is only one team, just different players. It’s all Neo-liberalism.
Perhaps Worksave and Labour inspectors should call,themselves consultants then the government may hire more of them.
This is beyond hopeless.
Who is sleeping on the job?
180000 on unemployment yet we need Philippine bus drivers to get the Auckland bus service up to full strength.
Either because Kiwis are lazy, incompetent & drug-addled, or something about lousy pay, conditions & work environment. Which do you think?
I hear the worst bus cancellation routes are a bus company owned by a US equity company.
We are so fucked in NZ, we can’t even run a local bus service that even the most third world nations can do successfully.
Sound like transport doesn’t work with a private US equity company owning it and using migrant bus drivers and hundreds of people in NZ administrating it all.
Don’t worry, plenty of migrants here on ghost or minimum waged jobs with free health care, schooling, pensions, aged care and government top ups as well as future residency (whereby anyone with a real skill can leave for OZ). I really don’t think it’s the migrants getting the bad deal, I think it’s the current NZ taxpayers.
For example in 2019 NZ used to get nearly 4 billion from foreign students, BUT we have more foreign students but lost 3/4 of the revenue – they just found a way to get get it for free by getting one family member to get a low paid or ghost job and then the dependants are like pigs in muck! https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/489938/student-visa-applications-growing-but-not-everywhere
This is so vicious. It makes me ashamed of being a New Zealander. Refund their payments, and pay for transport back to their home towns not just to their country. We can’t expect to have good relations with China and be such a bad-arse nation.
Trying to explain to those workers tough luck, the government doesn’t care about citizens either would not redress their shock and grievance. We are living in a mirage of the past, a sort of hologram. But sometime the optical illusion will vanish, and then we will see clearly. Then what?
The government often makes it hard for people to get into work, have steady jobs that will enable suitable living conditions and the stand-down period can be a crushing time. It seems that the government, a supposed ‘Labour’ one, hates people. We need to adjust our ideas down to the conditions of the Industrial Revolution. The leaders have convinced themselves that NZs have had it good too long in the past and need to pull their socks up or get off the cart.
Good idea, then we will get another billion coming here to pay to send back, Sara. Maybe just cancel the visas with no money being given, with great publicity in China and NZ and then the word will get around the gravy train is over and the visa traffickers run out of marks.
You haven’t seen a Labour Government since the 1970s, it’s all Neo-liberalism since. Support for corporations & screw the workers. Labour is an illusion, National with a red tie.
agree 100%
glad to see the good old kiwi traditions being kept alive
And good old Queen.stown up with the play but who is paying?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/491996/migrant-workers-in-queenstown-face-hardship-as-they-get-fewer-hours-than-promised
The Queenstown Citizen Advice Bureau (CAB) is helping dozens of migrant workers who are struggling to pay rent and basic living costs because they are not getting the work hours they have been promised.
The bureau’s general manager Tracy Pool said over the past two months they had been contacted by 30 to 40 people on accredited employer work visas, most working in cleaning companies and the hospitality sector.
Accredited employers are required to guarantee workers a minimum of 30 hours a week, but Pool said many workers are getting far less than that, and their plight is being exacerbated by the rising cost of living.
Mayor Brown in Auckland was going to close their Citizens Advice Bureau. You can see why, they just stir people up and make trouble. /sarc
The only answer I can see to this trade in low paid exploited workers is for them to have to, by law, become union members. Their union membership must be fully funded by their employer. Without union advice and representation they are at the complete mercy of totally morally corrupt business owners.
I’m not advocating a return to the unionism of the 1960’s, just a reasonable protection of vulnerable people/workers.
But, while we are at it – why is there the need for immigrant workers when we have people on unemployment and job seeker benefits?