Migrant exploitation is the backbone of NZs low wage addiction

Government doesn’t know how many migrants scammed through its employer-worker scheme

The government admits it does not know how many migrants might have been scammed through one of its employer-worker schemes.

Hundreds of migrants have been crammed into homes and are living in squalor after paying tens of thousands of dollars to come to New Zealand, with promised jobs also nowhere to be seen.

One of the great pillars of NZs economic success is our exploitation of migrant labour.

The speed with which this exploitation has been rammed through with zero checks and balances has already been covered…

Shambles of our visa regime: Immigration staff reveal their truth

Immigration officers say they’ve been told to ignore criminal convictions and investigations, not to read supporting documents on visa applications, and not to check work visas at the border in a “light touch” drive to grant more visas faster.

Multiple past and present Immigration NZ (INZ) staff have told Stuff about their concerns with what they say is a completely dysfunctional visa regime that has allowed rampant fraud – including visa staff themselves exposing the flaws by using pictures of cats and dogs as supporting documents in a dummy visa application that was allegedly approved.

Staff had already told Stuff of issues with the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) scheme, with one saying the system was “completely f….d”.

Stuff has since seen an email from a senior INZ official, Peter Elms, which admits that the AEWV visa has “been manipulated by bad actors”.

…the employers got their wish after screaming about the lockdown and rather than challenge this and demand better wages and work conditions for Kiwis, Labour has capitulated and given the baby its bottle.

National and ACT will compound this problem by opening the floodgates of immigration, removing the Foreign Buyers Ban and killing off Fair Pay Agreements so workers have no bargaining power.

ACT and National intend to slash MBIE by 30% when MBIE is the only one policing the exploitation so that there is no policing of it in the first place!

Since 2017, Labour has increased the minimum wage by nearly $7 per hour, or $556 a fortnight – that sort of fact enrages the NZ Business Community and they demand cheaper more exploitable workers!

The solution is to make every migrant worker a compulsory Union member, that’s the solution yet Labour are too spineless for that.

When we have such toothless ambition, exploitation will never end and only become deeply entrenched.

 

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