15/10/10 - Permit changes to boost export education

• Email a Friend

Changes to study entitlements for temporary permit holders will benefit the export education industry, Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman says.

"Export education already generates over $2 billion a year in foreign exchange for New Zealand's economy and has been identified as a key sector for future growth," Dr Coleman says.

Under the new changes, all temporary permit holders will be able to study one or more courses for up to three months in total instead of a single course under the current rules. Multi -year temporary permit holders will also be allowed to study for up to three months in each consecutive 12-month period, rather than once only per permit.

Dr Coleman says schools will also benefit from the changes, which will be made in late July. Migrants will be able to study for up to three months in a school, per calendar year, on a visitor's permit. This means that young migrants will not have to apply for a student visa or permit if their parents want them to have a "taster" experience in a New Zealand school.

Feedback shows that the previous rules posed too many barriers to the export education industry, says Dr Coleman.

"While New Zealand's student immigration policies already compare favourably with competitor countries, these improvements will create additional opportunities for growth. Making it easier for temporary permit holders to study more while in New Zealand for other purposes is a win-win situation for all concerned."

(Source Beehive)

11/06/10 - Immigration lawyer takes corruption complaint to police

• Email a Friend

Tauranga lawyer has taken his complaint of corruption at Immigration New Zealand's New Delhi office to the Indian police after the agency closed its investigation into an earlier complaint.

Vinay Deobhakta, a barrister specialising in immigration advocacy, alleges that an India-based travel agent was "splitting commissions" with Indian officials working for Immigration New Zealand.

He complained last year that agency officials in New Delhi were demanding bribes to process visas.

Mr Deobhakta has requested the Wellington CIB also re-opens its investigation into his earlier complaint. While trying to get a group of 47 Indians into New Zealand last year, Mr Deobhakta alleged that an immigration officer had demanded a $282,000 bribe to process their visas.

He was told by an Auckland woman, who claimed to have a relative in Immigration's New Delhi office, that the visa applications would fail unless he paid the officer $6000 per person.

Mr Deobhakta had made a secret recording of a conversation he had with the woman which he provided to Immigration New Zealand, and now to the Indian police.

"None of the people met the criteria for work permits, but despite this, the lady boasted she had a very good contact ... who had direct dealings with immigration officers in the office of Immigration New Zealand, New Delhi.

She said that she would be getting her contact to arrange the work permits within days, not months," he said.

Mr Deobhakta said the Indian travel agent at the centre of his new complaint was also named by the woman in the same recording.

Immigration New Zealand says its New Delhi office had stringent audit and verification systems in place, and that all work was carried out under closed-circuit television and recorded.

"But people in India are not so stupid to be exchanging cash and bribes under closed-circuit TV in the office. They'd be doing it outside, at someone's home or over a meal," Mr Deobhakta said.

Mr Deobhakta claimed he paid the woman $100,000 to help with the agency's investigation.

But Immigration head Nigel Bickle said the matter was closed after investigations by the Department of Labour, which oversees Immigration, found no evidence.

Mr Bickle said the agency has no record of the new complaint.

(Source Lincoln Tan, NZ Herald)

10/06/10 - Extra help for new migrants and refugees

• Email a Friend

Extra funding in Budget 2010 will help migrants and refugees settle in when they make New Zealand their home, says Associate Social Development Minister Tariana Turia.

The Government will increase investment in the Settling In initiative by $3 million over the next three years. The increased funding will support extra coordinators in more regions around the country.

"I have seen first hand how the Settling In initiative has made a real and tangible difference to the quality of life for new New Zealanders and I am delighted that the funding increase will help to make their transition even easier," Mrs Turia says.

The Settling In initiative was introduced in 2004 to help make it easier for refugees and migrants to establish themselves in New Zealand.

"It recognised the increasing ethnic diversity in this country and a growing awareness that intervention was required beyond the early settlement period," Mrs Turia says.

Settling In is a community development programme that works directly with newcomer communities.

"It is a collaborative programme where coordinators work with a range of government and community organisations within the refugee and migrant communities."

Evaluation in 2008 found that the Settling In programme was successfully contributing to a wide range of positive outcomes for refugees and migrants and for host communities.

(Source Beehive)

08/06/10 - Licence delays locking up immigration agents

• Email a Friend

A south Auckland immigration agent who has been waiting for a year to get a licence to practice is furious at the delay and says it is causing her family financial hardship.

Agents now have to get a licence from the Immigration Advisers Authority, a process that is meant to take just 40 working days.

However, Alunga Tangilanu's home-based business has been locked up for a year - and so is her family income.

"I suffered a lot mentally, spiritually and physically, it's an ordeal to me. We struggle a lot. We suffer financially," says Tangilanu.

She applied for her licence last June, sending in the fee of nearly $2,000 along with the 54-page application. The problem is, she is still waiting.

ONE News asked the Immigration Advisors Authority what is taking so long.

Registrar of Immigration Advisers at the agency, Barry Smedts, says the agency's primary role is to protect consumers.

"We're all about providing protection to migrants. Mrs Tangilanu's case is under investigation and I'm not prepared to discuss that."

Smedts says the authority is still waiting for information to arrive from overseas. Advertisement "We've done 86% of our applications in 40 working days and 96% of our applications in 50 working days," he says.

But ONE News understands that, as well as Tangilanu's case, another two people have been waiting for an excessive amount of time.

The authority, which has a small staff, has approved 450 applications in two years.

Smedts says the agency has to do thorough investigations to get the right outcome.

(Source TVNZ)

07/06/10 - Immigration gets green light for '$60m' surgery

• Email a Friend

Immigration New Zealand has been given the green light to proceed with an overhaul of its creaking computer systems that is expected to cost more than $60 million.

The status of the project, which was conceived by the last Labour government, appeared uncertain after no funding was set aside for it in this year's Budget. But Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman told a select committee that it would be paid for with contingency funding and from the agency's existing baselines.

The Government had inherited "significant problems" with Immigration's 16 year-old application management system (AMS), he said. A 2008 auditor-general report found weaknesses in the department's ability to prevent and detect identity fraud by migrants, while a Cabinet paper said 39,000 visa decisions were made in 2007 without direct access to AMS, describing that as a "high-risk situation".

Dr Coleman said Immigration had 60 databases, some of which were not linked, meaning staff could not easily access all the information the agency might hold on visa applicants. "Every immigration officer has access to those databases, but cannot necessarily assemble all the relevant information on one screen."

The replacement system is expected to let immigration officers capture and store biometric information on migrants, allow for consistent, centralised decision-making and let migrants apply for visas and track their applications online.

"One of the issues about quality in immigration is that there is a huge degree of discretion at the front line," Dr Coleman said.

Labour Department deputy chief executive Nigel Bickle, who is responsible for Immigration New Zealand, said it expected to go to tender in September. "We expect to be back in front of ministers in February 2011 for a final investment decision."

Mr Bickle gave the assurance after opposition communications spokesman David Cunliffe clashed with Dr Coleman and officials over the apparent lack of progress.

Mr Cunliffe said that in 2006, the Labour government was advised AMS was on its last legs and could crash at any time. "Almost four years later not only has no progress been made with that change programme, but there is now no money in the Budget to do that."

He said that when Labour was in government, it was told the new IT systems would cost a minimum of $62.4m. That was the "cut-down, bare-bones, minimum number" needed to provide a single view of clients, biometric capability, business rules engines and links to databases maintained by Customs and the Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry, he said. About $8m has already been spent on preparatory work.

Dr Coleman said that while AMS needed "serious attention", he was confident it was not about to stop working and it was not correct to say there had been no progress replacing it.

"There has been major work done in terms of business processes, diagnosis and re-engineering – that is ongoing work." The Government did not quantify the contingency funding in the Budget as it didn't want to tip suppliers off about how much it expected to spend.

Dr Coleman announced in the Budget that $10m would be spent over four years patching up AMS. Mr Bickle said than in addition to the capital funding, another extra $10m would be spent on running costs. That should buy time for the development of a replacement system, he said.

(Source Dominion Post)

18/05/10 - Migrant loses grievance case against employer

• Email a Friend

A woman has lost a case in which she claimed her employer asked her to pay her own taxes and wages to support her residency application.

Jacqueline Sydow, an immigrant from South Africa, was ruled by the Employment Relations Authority to have no case against her employer, Executive Recruiters International.

The authority found that Ms Sydow was not dismissed by her employer and that she did not have a case for personal grievance.

The authority also found that Pierre Le Noel, whom she accused of blackmailing her into working for nothing, was not her employer and therefore had no liability as a party to her employment contract.

Ms Sydow had taken Mr Le Noel to the authority for allegedly making her obtain New Zealand permanent residency by fraudulent means.

She was offered a $55,000 job on November 14, 2008, but within a week of starting work on January 19 last year was given a new contract dated January 18 which said she would be paid only on a commission basis.

Ms Sydow obtained a work permit with her initial job offer, and believed an entirely commission-based contract would not meet the qualifying criteria for a permanent residence application.

The authority found the employer had unilaterally varied the original terms and conditions.

"There was a serious breach of the employment agreement ... in January 2009, when Mr Le Noel imposed the January 18 remuneration terms on Ms Sydow without obtaining her consent," said authority member Alastair Dumbleton in his judgment. However, he also said Mr Le Noel had been trying to forestall redundancy during the recession. And he said of "critical importance" to the determination of the claim was "the subsequent conduct of the parties" between January and August.

"In that time Mr Le Noel was given no reason by Ms Sydow to believe that she had not accepted the January 18 terms under which she received her remuneration," he said.

"Ms Sydow worked on without protest or objection to those terms ... although initially in January 2009 she had expressed her dissatisfaction ... there was then a five-or-more-month period in which she did nothing to suggest she had not accepted the terms and conditions which provided for her remuneration to be on a commission-only basis."

Mr Dumbleton said he found that Ms Sydow had resigned freely, although unhappily, and did not have a claim of constructive dismissal. "There was no attempt by ERI to coerce Ms Sydow's resignation.

"Although there was, I have found, a breach by the employer of the employment agreement in January 2009, no remedyhas been sought by way of penaltyagainst the employer ERI, or against Mr Le Noel."

(Source Lincoln Tan, NZ Herald)

04/06/10 - One-fifth of immigration decisions 'questionable'

• Email a Friend

The public will be "appalled" that one-fifth of Immigration New Zealand decisions are considered "poor and questionable", Labour says.

The new figures were released at a select committee hearing at Parliament yesterday.

Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman told MPs that the 21.8 per cent of decisions the service considered "poor and questionable" was an improvement on a previous score of 29.1 per cent. "There is going to be an ongoing drive to improve the quality of decision-making across Immigration New Zealand," he said.

The service's performance was an issue the National-led Government had "inherited".

"We have set some clear targets around quality of decision-making [and] customer satisfaction."

Coleman said the proportion of good decisions had risen from 36.2 per cent to 53.6 per cent.

Labour MP David Cunliffe, a former immigration minister, said the figures showed that decisions were about one-third good, one-third bad and one-third indifferent. The latest improvement in the figure was encouraging, he said.

"But if it's that rumpy to start with, the public must be appalled to receive this news that it's essentially a random walk in an immigration decision-making process between the wrong decision, the right decision and something in between."

(Source The Press)

Well, just a reason more to use a Licenced Immigration Adviser!! Contact us.

02/06/10 - Migration should meet skill needs

• Email a Friend

The Press reported this week the apparently opposed views of the Minister for Tertiary Education, Steven Joyce, and the chairman of the Vice-Chancellors' Committee, Derek McCormack, with regard to the ability of international students to move on to become permanent migrants of this country.

On the one hand the vice- chancellors' are advocating making it easier for international students to migrate to New Zealand following graduation, whereas the minister wants to encourage international students to come here for academic reasons, not as a shortcut to obtaining permanent residency.

As the industry body for New Zealand's export education industry, Education New Zealand would argue that these two views are not necessarily mutually exclusive, provided that international students meet and fulfil New Zealand's skilled migration needs.

Globally, export education is a highly competitive business.

New Zealand is in competition with other countries that offer broadly similar services.

Thus, New Zealand will have a comparative advantage and be successful in trading in export education if it can provide that service to a better quality and/or at a lower cost than its competitors.

The various sources of comparative advantage in export education include:

• the quality of the institutions providing the service
• the strength of quality assurance and accreditation processes
• the portability of the qualifications gained
• strength of marketing and promotion
• the intrinsic attractiveness of the countr
• socio-political environment including personal security
• immigration policies
• cost
• the policy and regulatory environment and
• the quality of student support services offered by the institutions.

All of the above are important, but the immigration-education linkage is absolutely critical.

Immigration policy and practice can limit the size of the international student pool through requirements around entry to New Zealand, the attractiveness of the service (for example. by limiting what students can do while studying in New Zealand or the nature of the pathways to permanent residency), or both.

One of the best ways to grow the export education industry is by allowing motivated and talented individuals the right to migrate upon the completion of their qualifications, but with an important prerequisite - they should meet New Zealand's skilled migration needs.

Graduating international students provide the New Zealand economy with a ready pool of highly motivated and qualified individuals who are more readily able to adapt to New Zealand than other migrants (because in most cases they have lived in this country for several years), and have even paid the full cost of their education (not subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayer).

By linking migration pathways for international students to a tightly focused list of New Zealand's skilled migration needs, this will avoid the situation that has happened in Australia over the last 12 months where the migration pathway was open to a very wide range of lower- skilled migration occupations.

This led to a boom in lower-level courses, and according to anecdotes Australia started filling up with a large number of people taking courses such as hairdressing just to qualify for migration to the Lucky Country.

This sort of policy change is certainly not what we are calling for.

Rather, we are seeking export education to be viewed as a critical partner in the race for global talent acquisition. This can in turn provide a boost to the industry at the front end through strengthening New Zealand's comparative advantage.

Talent acquisition is increasingly an issue because globally there is a shift in developing countries moving away from low-skilled economic activity towards more of a knowledge- based economy that have a core requirement of needing a well- educated workforce which can master and manipulate information and technology tools and platforms, while continuing to adapt to innovation pressures.

This is where export education can help - a thriving export-education sector produces graduates with quality qualifications, and this provides a ready pool of qualified individuals to help close skill gaps in the New Zealand economy.

We welcome the Tertiary Education Minister's support and aspirations for the export-education industry.

The industry, already New Zealand's fifth largest foreign exchange earner, generates over $2.1 billion in net foreign exchange per year for the economy.

The industry is a direct generator of over 45,000 jobs for Kiwis, and this excludes indirect employment and consumption affects.

To reach this level since 1989 is a major success story.

We share the minister's aspiration that the industry can go much further.

Last year industry revenue grew by 10 per cent or $61 million.

With the minister's support we believe we have the potential to grow another 10 per cent this year.

Growth in this industry creates jobs, attracts more brain power to New Zealand, and helps our economy to remain competitive in the global marketplace because our future workforce is increasingly at ease with a range of international languages, cultures and beliefs, and will be able to tap into international connections and networks through the relationships that they have formed.

Growing our share of the globally mobile student market involves support from the Government not just through funding, but also through student-friendly immigration and education policies. * Robert Stevens is the chief executive of Education New Zealand.

(Source The Press)

26/05/10 - Employment-case loser told to leave NZ

• Email a Friend

A South African who lost an employment case against her employer has been told to leave the country by Immigration New Zealand.

The agency has revoked Jacqueline Sydow's work permit and has told her to leave by June 11.

Ms Sydow claimed Executive Recruiters International asked her to pay her own taxes and wages to support her residency application.

The Employment Relations Authority ruled that she had no case against her employer. The authority found she was not dismissed and therefore did not have a case for personal grievance.

She has been told to leave because she now has no job.

Her lawyer John Appleby has written to Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman seeking an extension of time to enable her to look for another job.

Immigration New Zealand head Nigel Bickle said: "While we can sympathise with her situation, Ms Sydow's permit was revoked because she was no longer working for the employer specified on her permit and she was therefore in breach of the terms and conditions of that permit."

Mr Bickle said migrants with information about arrangements of such a nature were encouraged to come forward, but the agency could not guarantee immunity from enforcement action.

(Source Lincoln Tan, NZ Herald)

24/05/10 - Having NZ children no bar to overstayers being kicked out

• Email a Friend

Illegal immigrants have been warned they can still face removal from this country even if they have New Zealand-born children.

The best interests of a New Zealand-citizen youngster do not necessarily determine whether the parents can stay here, says the Removal Review Authority in a new decision.

Having a child who is a New Zealand citizen does not give them a right to reside or remain in this country, says the head of Immigration New Zealand, Nigel Bickle.

He said the agency did not have figures on how many parents with New Zealand-citizen children had been removed or deported, because no statistics were kept on the matter.

Children born in New Zealand before 2006 received automatic citizenship, but now at least one parent has to be either a New Zealand citizen or resident for them to acquire citizenship.

Ruling on the appeal of a 39-year-old Indian who is fighting to remain here with his 5-year-old son, a citizen, the Removal Review Authority said "the best interests of the children are not necessarily determinative" to whether the parents can remain in New Zealand.

Vinod Kumar Patel had his work permit revoked after Immigration New Zealand found that his wife, Bharatibahen Jashubhai Patel, 32, had lied about being single. They were already married and had a daughter when she lodged her application as a dependent child of her mother under the family category in 2001.

The couple had their second child, Deep Vinodbhai Patel, in 2005 in New Zealand. According to court documents, Ms Patel said she and her mother believed she was single and without children because she was separated from her husband and did not have custody of her daughter.

But she failed to convince the Deportation Review Tribunal and the High Court. Her permanent residence was revoked in 2006 and Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman has said he is not prepared to intervene.

The authority said in its decision of her appeal: "The reality is that the family cannot remain together as a family unit in New Zealand because of the mother's history.

"The upheaval confronting the family essentially flows from the consequences of the mother's misconduct."

Last year, in a case involving Chinese overstayer parents with citizen children, the Supreme Court criticised immigration officials for their lack of consideration of how the children are affected when they or their overstayer parents are removed.

Former Immigration Minister Tuariki Delamere, now a licensed immigration adviser, said then that the court decision meant all deported parents who had New Zealand-citizen children could have their cases reopened.

But Immigration New Zealand said the Immigration Act states that any decision has to be challenged within 28 days.

Mr Bickle said permanent residency was often revoked because of applicants providing misleading information to the service.

Before people unlawfully in New Zealand were removed, they were provided with the opportunity to present reasons they should not be sent away, he said.

"If the person has a New Zealand-citizen child, the best interests of the child will form a primary part of the consideration as to whether or or not removal should go ahead," Mr Bickle said.

"The arrangement as to where a New Zealand-citizen child will reside is a matter for the parent."

(Source Lincoln Tan, NZ Herald)