ISSUE
Friday, August 15, 2025
Volume 16 . Issue 72
The latest visa scam revolves around an agent allegedly falsifying work experience on visa documents for Filipino farm workers. In four years to 2013 there were more than 3,000 complaints of immigration fraud.
Imagine how many cases went unreported.
You can understand the migrants but the fraud is the price New Zealand is paying for loose, unsophisticated and mindless immigration and failure to train our own workforce. It is the price of having a government obsessed with the view that escalating consumer numbers will drive the economy and intent on allowing cheap and compliant workers to dominate industries.
At the same time, the government keeps deceiving New Zealanders that immigration is about skilled workers. No one in their right mind would suggest that the Philippines is full of experienced dairy farmers and construction workers. Many are here because agents, often from the same country, are charging outrageous fees, have falsified documents to show experience, either with or without the workers’ knowledge. The workers learn their skills here.
A farmer, commenting on the latest scam, said his workers built up skills after they reached New Zealand. They now have the “relevant work experience on farm” and NZQA “recognition of learning”. Government researchers and economists could have predicted a need for farm workers, so where was the planning? Where were the courses and the cadetships to inspire and take young Kiwis on to the land to support dairying?
Kiwis were written off as too fussy, not flexible over hours and wages, etc., but it could have been different. All that was required was some creativity. Take a bunch of young Kiwis to a farm and check out who has an affinity for animals and who looks suited to the land. Then put them into training.
Instead, people from overseas were accepted without skills and trained in this country. It was too easy to take advantage of people from countries where there is less opportunity. Now the Immigration Department and government have a dilemma of their own making—whether to deport hundreds of workers here on false documentation.
If they grant an amnesty, what message will that send to others applying for visas? The same message of laxity and looseness that attracted this abusive process and our laws in the first place.
The latest visa scam revolves around an agent allegedly falsifying work experience on visa documents for Filipino farm workers. In four years to 2013 there were more than 3,000 complaints of immigration fraud.
Imagine how many cases went unreported.
You can understand the migrants but the fraud...
The latest visa scam revolves around an agent allegedly falsifying work experience on visa documents for Filipino farm workers. In four years to 2013 there were more than 3,000 complaints of immigration fraud.
Imagine how many cases went unreported.
You can understand the migrants but the fraud is the price New Zealand is paying for loose, unsophisticated and mindless immigration and failure to train our own workforce. It is the price of having a government obsessed with the view that escalating consumer numbers will drive the economy and intent on allowing cheap and compliant workers to dominate industries.
At the same time, the government keeps deceiving New Zealanders that immigration is about skilled workers. No one in their right mind would suggest that the Philippines is full of experienced dairy farmers and construction workers. Many are here because agents, often from the same country, are charging outrageous fees, have falsified documents to show experience, either with or without the workers’ knowledge. The workers learn their skills here.
A farmer, commenting on the latest scam, said his workers built up skills after they reached New Zealand. They now have the “relevant work experience on farm” and NZQA “recognition of learning”. Government researchers and economists could have predicted a need for farm workers, so where was the planning? Where were the courses and the cadetships to inspire and take young Kiwis on to the land to support dairying?
Kiwis were written off as too fussy, not flexible over hours and wages, etc., but it could have been different. All that was required was some creativity. Take a bunch of young Kiwis to a farm and check out who has an affinity for animals and who looks suited to the land. Then put them into training.
Instead, people from overseas were accepted without skills and trained in this country. It was too easy to take advantage of people from countries where there is less opportunity. Now the Immigration Department and government have a dilemma of their own making—whether to deport hundreds of workers here on false documentation.
If they grant an amnesty, what message will that send to others applying for visas? The same message of laxity and looseness that attracted this abusive process and our laws in the first place.
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