‘No apologies’ on immigration changes from stalwart Stanford

Visa fees are going up across the board as the immigration minister sets in place a user-pays model for migrants
Erica Stanford has unveiled her vision to help her agency pay its own way, with changes to specific visas.
For seasonal migrant workers, Stanford’s announcement brought the much-desired introduction of a multiple-entry clause – but it came at a price. Employers will now be able to shift some costs onto staff. 
For anyone looking for permanence in New Zealand, the impact of the news was proportional to what they have to offer the country: more pathways and opportunities for higher-skilled workers or those in shortage fields, while lower-skilled workers face more restrictions and scrutiny from a minister who wouldn’t apologise for putting Kiwis first. 
Stanford’s speech was dominated by the theme of competing pressures. From the very top, she categorised the immigration portfolio as one in which “no matter how hard you try, it is impossible to please everyone.”
She described her goals as ambitious, and said her vision was an immigration system that was flexible, responsive, navigable and user-friendly, all without sacrificing timeliness or security. She wanted to reduce job seeker numbers by 50,000 in over five years, but also to grow the economy and increase exports. “So you can see the competing pressures there,” said Stanford.
In an effort to get more Kiwis into jobs, she took aim at low-skilled migrants who came to New Zealand under more lax immigration rules. “Despite best efforts, the previous Government’s settings weren’t right,” said Stanford. 
She said the post-lockdown border surge put unmanageable pressure on Immigration New Zealand. With tens of thousands of people trying to cross at once, “Immigration NZ needed to put a process in place, overriding their systems. Essentially, they were not assessing risk.”
Stanford said this risk went both ways. Background documents weren’t scrutinised, but neither were onshore employers. This led to “terrible consequences”, said Stanford. “We all saw that with the unacceptable levels of migrant exploitation: the stories of 40 men crammed into a three bedroom house with no food, migrants paying tens of thousands of dollars to get jobs with no genuine job offer.” 
She also pointed to record levels of asylum claims. With our borders “effectively compromised”, said Stanford, New Zealand saw 2500 claims in a 12-month period, five times the historical rate. And while an estimated 80 percent of these won’t hold water, “it will take years to get rid of the backlog”, she said.
In the meantime, those asylum seekers have what Stanford called the “golden ticket” of visas in the Open Work Visa, one that gives them the flexibility to work in nearly any field and compete for jobs with everyday Kiwis. 
“They’re here because we didn’t assess risk properly, where in the past, they would have been declined and kept offshore. Now they are here, and they are claiming asylum,” said Stanford. 
The consequences were felt by everyone, she said. She described longer wait times to see a GP, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages and – drawing on her other portfolio – “enormous pressure on our schools”.
Stanford said the country had seen a massive uptick in demand for English language support “and a flood of students with undiagnosed additional learning needs”, as a result of loose border restrictions.
All in all, Stanford said there was now a “significantly higher proportion of low-skilled workers than what we were seeing pre-Covid”.
And these migrants were not the of calibre Stanford wanted to admit: “While there will always be a need for low skill at entry level positions in certain regions and in certain industries, we know that we need a higher – much higher – proportion of highly-skilled workers to drive our economy and improve our productivity.”
Her solution was to return to pre-pandemic policies. Under Stanford’s changes, for low-skilled roles, the maximum continuous stay has been reduced from five to three years. A basic English requirement was reinstated, and provisions for partners and children were removed. “Many of these changes were not new. They were just a return to pre-Covid settings that better balance the needs of business with the wider interests of New Zealand,” said Stanford.
When these migrants compete with Kiwis for jobs, Stanford held employers at fault for contributing to lacklustre statistics. “Just to give you an example, since April, under my new changes, the Ministry of Social Development has listed over 3000 roles via the Accredited Employer Work Visa associated listings,” said Stanford. “Of those, just over 50 have resulted in a New Zealander being employed. It’s less than two percent.” When employers did not consider hiring a migrant worker, that placement rate rose to 60 percent.  
Stanford said she could appreciate that some employers may prefer a migrant for a given role, but called out “a significant number of employers” who predetermine a migrant for a position and don’t take the MSD requirements seriously.
“It’s not reasonable to me that someone can have 50 applicants from New Zealanders through MSD for a lower-skilled job and say that not a single person is appropriate for that role,” she said. 
Stanford said the country’s future success “relies on supporting New Zealanders into work, not leaving tens of thousands of people unemployed while bringing in tens of thousands of migrants on temporary work visas.”
On her watch, she expected Immigration NZ to push back against employers who claimed they couldn’t recruit locally. “I don’t apologise.”
High-skilled workers were another story, with Stanford looking to broaden not only their entry to the country, but their pathways to residence.
She moved on to the Skilled Migrant Category: “If we’re to grow our exports, build infrastructure and rebuild the economy, we need to ensure that we can attract and retain the skilled people that we need.”
Currently, said Stanford, to enter under this pathway, one either had to have a degree, you had to be in a registered occupation, or earn 1.5 times the median wage.” But this omitted a whole category of missing skilled workers, predominantly in the trades, who had many years of experience, who were well qualified, who could help train up Kiwi workers, but who had no pathway to residence.
Stanford said she recognised the inability to retain skilled workers was a “source of deep frustration” for many employers in New Zealand, and agreed the pathway needed to change. After finishing work on the Accredited Employer visa, this was where she would turn her focus. 
In the meantime, work had already been completed on amending the Recognised Seasonal Employer Visa (RSE).
Stanford announced the Government was progressing with a time-limited pathway for an essential seasonal worker-style visa, which she said would be a temporary fix while further details were ironed out.
Again drawing on her theme of competing interests, Stanford said she wanted to make sure the Government was striking the right balance between reducing costs and compliance for employers and improving the flexibility for the workers. “I think we got that balance right.”
NZ Apples and Pears is the largest employer of RSE workers. Its chief executive, Karen Morrish, said Stanford’s temporary fix was bang-on: “To have them permanent would be fantastic,” she said. 
The new RSE scheme will include Timor-Leste and increase its cap by 1250 to a total of 20,750 for the coming season. In a major boon for workers, it will also allow a worker multiple entries to the country.
Morrish said adding the multiple-entry clause to the visa was “a game-changer” for workers, who previously would have to go through a separate process to go home in the middle of the work season for any sort of bereavement or celebration. 
But while the multiple-entry clause will be celebrated by employees, the flexibility came with a concession: their employers will now be able to shift some costs back onto the workers.
Employers still have to pay 50 percent of a worker’s visa costs, but once onshore, they can charge that worker an accommodation fee. This fee had been frozen during the pandemic, but Stanford has opened it back up, capped at a 15 percent increase on current fees. Additionally, until a worker completes three seasons, the employer is no longer required to pay them 10 percent above minimum wage
Until now, Stanford’s time in front of cameras has largely been spent on education policy or the Abuse in Care report.
Thursday’s presentation was probably the first opportunity she’d had to lay out her immigration priorities, she said. It was an area “well known for being extraordinarily complicated… where every little detail matters and there are far reaching consequences for any wrong move.”
Moving forward, the immigration strategy for the country would prioritise highly-skilled migrants, facilitate the process of hiring offshore seasonal workers, and use increased fees to fund the rest of the service.
Stanford said: “This will restore the balance to the immigration system.”