The Government has announced plans to make it easier for employers to bring temporary workers into the country.
And it has also announced a reversal of the previous clampdown by the National Government in 2017 on families of lower paid temporary workers being allowed to also come into New Zealand.
The moves announced on Tuesday by Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway follow a consultation process undertaken by the Government. A total of 947 submissions were apparently received.
There will be a phased introduction, with the new rules fully taking effect in 2021.
The Government hasn't put any numbers around how many workers will be allowed in under the new rules.
A feature of the new plan is that it will include "sector agreements" with various targeted industries that have a high reliance on migrant workers. Sectors identified for initial negotiations include: residential care (including aged care), meat processing, dairy, forestry, road freight transport, and tourism and hospitality. The construction and horticulture and viticulture sectors are also potential candidates.
Another notable feature of the new rules is that employers seeking to bring in high-paid employees will be exempt from any labour market checks as to whether there are New Zealanders available for the jobs.
Lees-Galloway says the new rules "will assist around 25-30,000 businesses get the workers they need to fill skills shortages". He says currently there are over 54,000 workers on the main employer assisted work visa – the essential skills visa.
“The new employer assisted temporary work visa process is more streamlined and less complex replacing six visa categories with one temporary work visa, and it ensures there is an employer check, a job check and a worker check."
The background document issued on the changes, includes this explanatory passage:
The Government wants to make the process of hiring a temporary foreign worker easier and more straightforward by providing more certainty earlier about whether or not an employer will be able to hire a foreign worker for a particular job.
To do this, the Government will introduce an employer-led visa application process which will include three specific steps: the employer check, the job check and the worker check.
The new process will require all employers to be accredited before they can recruit a temporary foreign worker. There will be three types of accreditation: standard accreditation (for employers recruiting between one and five foreign workers in a 12 month period); high volume accreditation (for employers recruiting more than five foreign workers in a 12 month period); and accreditation for labour hire companies. The standard accreditation will focus on assessing that the employer meets minimum employment and immigration regulatory standards, and that they are taking steps to reduce exploitation.
The high-volume and labour hire accreditations will focus on the same elements of standard accreditation with more comprehensive checks and additional standards for attracting and retaining New Zealand workers.
Once an employer is accredited, the job check will then assess whether the job the employer is seeking to recruit for is genuine, has terms and conditions (including pay) that are consistent with New Zealand standards and that the employer has made a real attempt to recruit a New Zealander.
But further to the "real attempt to recruit a New Zealander" part of the proposal, the document goes on to explain that: "For jobs with very high pay (200% or twice the median wage) there will be no labour market test requirement (that is, a check as to whether there are New Zealanders available)."
And additionally, the document also says: "For those paid above the median wage and in the parts of the country where there are fewer New Zealanders available there will be no labour market test."
The median wage is given as $52,000.
On the removal of the previous National Government's restrictions on family of lower paid workers coming to NZ, the document says:
The Government will reinstate the ability for lower-paid foreign workers to support their partner and children to come to New Zealand for the length of their visa. This was restricted in 2017.
The foreign worker will continue to need to meet a minimum income threshold, the purpose of which is to ensure that their income is sufficient to support themselves and their family while in New Zealand.
The partner of a lower-paid worker will be granted a visitor visa unless they are able to obtain a work visa in their own right. Partners of highly-paid workers will still be granted an ‘open’ work visa.
Dependent children of a lower-paid worker will have access to primary and secondary education as subsidised domestic students. They will only be able to access tertiary education as full fee-paying international students.
As part of the changes the Government will negotiate Sector Agreements with some sectors which will include agreeing a workforce plan and the conditions to be met for recruiting foreign workers for specified key occupations.
The background paper says:
Sector Agreements will be negotiated with sectors that have a high reliance on temporary foreign workers (especially in lower-paid occupations). Employers who are recruiting foreign workers for occupations covered by a Sector Agreement will be required to comply with the agreement. Sector Agreements will support facilitated access to foreign workers to meet shortages in the short term by making this a more certain and lower-cost process. In exchange, the sector will be required to make commitments and demonstrate progress towards placing a greater share of New Zealanders into jobs in the sector and reducing the sector’s reliance on temporary foreign workers over time.
Sector Agreements will be negotiated two at a time, with the first two negotiations to be completed by mid-2020, two further negotiations by the end of 2020 and two more in 2021.
The first Sector Agreements to be negotiated will likely be for the residential care and meat processing sectors. The process will formally begin before the end of 2019.
The Government says the changes will be implemented in stages to help manage a smooth transition over to the new system.
It gives the following timetable:
The changes to the existing employer accreditation scheme and Work to Residence – Talent (Accredited Employers) visa category will be implemented in October 2019.
Replacing existing skill bands with a simple remuneration threshold and reinstating the ability for lower-paid migrants to bring their family will come into effect mid-2020.
The first sector agreements are expected to be completed in mid-2020.
The new visa and application process will have a phased implementation in 2021. This will ensure that all employers are not required to be accredited on the same day. Existing accredited employers will have a streamlined transition into the new system.
In the meantime, employers and temporary foreign workers should continue using existing processes for hiring foreign workers.
This was the full statement put out by Iain Lees-Galloway:
Helping regions fill skills shortages while ensuring Kiwis come first
The Government is making progress on building an inclusive, sustainable and productive economy by helping regions and businesses get the workers they need with a new temporary work visa process, announced today by Minister of Immigration Iain Lees-Galloway.
This will assist around 25-30,000 businesses get the workers they need to fill skills shortages. Currently there are over 54,000 workers on the main employer assisted work visa – the essential skills visa.
In December 2018 – March 2019, the Government consulted on a number of changes to employer-assisted temporary work visa settings. A total of 947 submissions were received from the public during consultation.
“We are committed to ensuring that businesses are able to get the workers they need to fill critical skills shortages, while encouraging employers and regions to work together on long term workforce planning including supporting New Zealanders with the training they need to fill the gaps,” says Iain Lees-Galloway.
“The new employer assisted temporary work visa process is more streamlined and less complex replacing six visa categories with one temporary work visa, and it ensures there is an employer check, a job check and a worker check.
“The process allows us to ensure foreign workers are only recruited for genuine shortages, helps us reduce exploitation, and creates better connections between immigration, education and welfare systems.
“The employment and training of New Zealanders, where they are available, will always be the key priority which is why we are introducing more requirements and incentives for employers to employ and train more New Zealanders.”
Changes to the employer-assisted temporary work visa system include:
- introducing a new employer-led visa framework that will drive the application process
- negotiating and introducing sector agreements ensuring there is more planning for future workforce needs
- reinstating the ability for lower-paid workers to bring their families to New Zealand
- replacing existing skills bands with a simple remuneration threshold aligned to the median wage
- for higher paid jobs, replacing the current set of skills shortage lists for cities and open access for regions.
- strengthening the labour market test for lower-paid workers.
“The new visa system will require all employers to be accredited and will give employers more certainty about their ability to hire a foreign worker earlier in the application process,” Iain Lees-Galloway says.
“It will also provide the foreign worker with more assurance about the employer they are coming to work for and the job they are coming to do.
“Sector agreements will be targeted at sectors with high reliance on temporary foreign workers and will enable specific terms and conditions for recruiting foreign workers to be negotiated between the government and individual sectors.
“A regional approach to the labour market test will ensure that foreign workers are able to be recruited for genuine skill shortages in regions with lower numbers of New Zealanders available for work, while ensuring that the labour market is tested regularly in areas with higher availability of New Zealanders.
“Together, these changes represent a significant shift in the way our temporary work visa system operates. It will make the process of hiring a foreign worker easier and more straightforward. It will also provide more certainty for employers due to upfront checks, while also increasing expectations on employers to train and employ more New Zealanders.
“These changes are part of the Government’s wider programme of workforce improvements, including the changes to vocational education and upcoming welfare reforms, which together will help create better connections between the immigration, education and welfare systems.
“The recently announced Regional Skills Leadership Groups will also play a key role in ensuring there is better planning and utilisation of the local labour market by coordinating labour market planning at a regional level.
“This will help determine immigration settings for each region and get more New Zealanders into better jobs with better wages and equip more businesses with the skilled workers they need to grow and thrive,” Mr Lees-Galloway says.
More information on the changes can be found at www.immigration.govt.nz/work-
visa-changes .
104 Comments
If you get elected without making promises then that suggests that enough of the electorate have faith in your abilities.
If you get elected based on a number of promises then break them, then that suggests that you either misled the electorate or you're out of your depth.
GST was one of the worst, that comes to mind. Complete denial of the housing crisis once they were in power also comes to mind (they claimed they were going to fix it, from memory).
Enough what-about-ism though. The current government is firmly putting it's middle finger up to those who voted them in. It's hard to find something that they have changed! More pay for a lot of underpaid public sector workers is probably the best thing they have done.
Caretaker governments too afraid to change anything. You can see it with this lot as they bury possible changes under huge extended analysis from working groups or other investigative groups. Then when the group suggests a change, the government take it off the table or never give the group the mandate for anything actually helpful. Paralysis through analysis and lack of vision.
That's where voters and politicians they are supposed to represent play a role.
However, both National and Labour seem to be approaching the issue of migration devoid of any integrity in their representation of the wishes of New Zealand voters.
Unfortunately both Labour and National in their dishonest approach to this issue will end up driving the rise of more populism in the longer term.
Does that mean then our labour market is over valued in global terms - hence our poor productivity? Our goods/services are exposed to the open market, so therefore do we need more protectionist policy to avoid our work force being displaced by cheaper migrant workers?
Just a thought
I believe apart from permanent residents and citizens, only work visa holders with a tenure of 2 years or more are eligible for publicly-funded health services. Therefore, while low-paid workers might qualify, they're spouse and children on non-work visas may not.
Here's a link containing the info.
INZ's website implies that, under the new rules, pay rate alone will dictate duration of a temporary work visa. So high-paid workers will be able to attain longer duration work visas.
Then it goes on to state that NZ's median wage is the mandatory threshold.
$25 an hour means the person is skilled enough to get a 3-year work visa. That's how low the entry standards are!
A person barely able to pay bills in Auckland or Wellington at 52k a year is considered highly-skilled.
Their children are eligible.
under 17 and your parent or guardian is eligible (2-year work visa)
https://www.govt.nz/browse/health/public-health-services/getting-public…
Importing families of low paid temporary work visa holders.
The word temporary clearly then becomes a dishonest label. There is obviously no intent for these to be temporary. This is straight out importing soon to be recipients of Working for Families and/or the Accommodation Supplement, simply to pander to the whinging hospitality and tourism industry bodies etc. Taxpayers will be effectively subsidising these industries.
Other countries are charging employer for any work permits - the large income would pay for the schools and hospitals and a $20,000pa charge is trivial if you are employing a top computer programmer. Helps keep the low wage immigrant out and it is they who introduce corruption/worker exploitation into NZ and also crowd out training of unemployed Kiwis. (Keep low wages lower - proved many times in many countries but who cares about low wages?
The question is does it matter? Just by polishing a turd Labour upped support from low 20% to upper 30%. Broken promises, whatever, doesn't matter. The current Labour government is pretty much the worst/most incompetent bunch we've ever had in NZ but they'll still be polling high above 40s.
Oh for goodness sake .............. So we can expect the Government to have to rent more Motel rooms for those displaced by new faces with well paid jobs , and you and I the long suffering taxpayer will foot the bill
People coming here to work will need accommodation that we dont have , and they will displace those at the lower end of the social spectrum .............as they outbid those unable to pay more in rents
Winston has just allowed the opposite to what he promised ............... can we ever trust him again ?
Boatman, he did it in 2003. With the Helen Clark Labour government he was the foreign minister I think.
And during that time we had massive immigration and massive house price increases.
So those of you who voted for him in the last election got what you deserved - because you simply couldn't remember back to 2003.
I came over in 2014 on the talent visa (short term) and eventually became a resident via skilled migrant category, as the work kept flowing this way. Although my wife and I smashed the requirements, the amount of hoops we had to jump through was staggering. And that's fine - it's your country, so your rules. But what grated was my low skilled high school friends from back home, who moved over to work in supermarkets. Their route to residency was much faster, cheaper, and simpler. While they provided no benefit I could see to the NZ economy.
Anyway, that's our experience with immigration. I just have raised eyebrows at this news. Also hard to see why this would be popular with the masses.
For me and most immigrants I know it as got worse. But then we were attracted by the space; even Auckland was full of parks and gardens and minimal high rises and terraces and motorways. It seems to be native born Kiwis who want to make Auckland a congested city .
What happens if unemployment is low, like now, and there are labour shortages in certain sectors
I believe the situation you describe should lead to significant upward pressures on wages. However, median has increased a meagre 2% in the year ended June 2019 with CPI over the same period at 1.7%.
Somehow we managed to clock a growth rate lower than we did back in 2011-12, just after the GFC, when unemployment in NZ was in the mid-6% range.
Granted we have shortages in certain sectors but two-thirds of the work visas issued by INZ go to "open category" applicants where little data is available on the applicant's skill level, occupation and hourly pay.
Education, retraining, polytechnics, investment in human development, so many things should be done and are possible. That is why we elect these people and send them to Parliament, to debate, discuss and design workable solutions. Not this kind of adhoc changes and twists and turns. Even the Middle Eastern countries which depend on imported labour heavily have quotas for localisation of the work force, since many years.
Not many immigrants move to the regions to fill those jobs, and those that do, dont stay there very long, they quickly pack up and move to Auckland. Thus necessitating another bunch of immigrants to be brought in. Never ending cycle. Of course, the obvious thing to do is to tie their visa to the region, and if they move from it, deport them. But that will never happen.
Don't mind where they come from. don't mind if they have brown and dark brown skins like my family. Positively like immigrants but let's get the numbers sensible, keep out the exploitation and stop using immigration to keep low wages lower. Check the figures for under-employment - it is one in eight. You only need 1 hours work per week to be called 'employed'
Unemployment is NOT low: https://duganotherhole.home.blog/2019/07/15/unemployment-stats-are-a-my…
Oh and as further evidence, the RBA recently reduced their OCR because they were worried about an approximately '100,000 unemployed weren't a problem before'. See here: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/15/economy-has-heaps-of-s… and here: https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/the-rba-just-backflipped-on-the-job-…
No, you would get to deduct the full amount of wages as a cost of business, thus reducing your profits, and reducing the amount of tax you have to pay on those profits. If you have enough illegal workers, you could run your business at a "loss" and still be raking in the cash.
My doctor is from South Africa. The lady who comes to trim the garden is from Japan. The carers who come to help me every morning are from England, the Philippines, Romania,......
I think I will have an Indian takeaway tonight. Or maybe the French restaurant just down the road.
My ancestors came from different European countries some via the Australian penal colonies.
My builder is from Denmark and the guy who dropped off a parcel the other day is from Samoa.
I welcome all of you
Funny that .........My Doctor on the shore is also South African, as is my dentist , and my optometrist at Spec Savers , and my son's doctor in West Auckland is a South African and a lady in our office has an oncologist from South Africa . I had a back op last year and the aneathetist was a young Jewish fellow from Johannesburg ........... South Africa must have a shit -ton of Doctors or ............are any Doctors left in South Africa ?
Under 30% of permanent residents are in the 'skilled' category - remainder are refugees, partners, kids. The definition of 'skill' includes chef, baker, shop manager, tourist guide - all of which at a high level are actually skilled but then they would be very well paid.
It’s not recognised as one either. Picking positions are filled mainly by overseas people on Recognised Seasonal Employment visas through approved operators. Why? Because kiwis won’t do it. They’d rather be on the dole, for less money. Not because an immigrant has preemptively taken their job, the job is there because a local won’t do it. This is the immigration law working well: filling a need in an important industry.
While there are a number of people who will not do this work, they are people who won't do any. The truth is, with the expansion of horticulture there just plain, straight out are not enough people to do it. The work is seasonal, so not a great option for anyone who is willing and able to work, they will be doing so, full time for full time money.
The RSE is a great win, win for Islander populations who do not have a lot of options at home, they can come here and earn money to take back home. The only thing we must absolutely make sure we eliminate is exploitation of them.
Not that simple. People will do work for a reasonable wage.
My father was a fruit picker when he was young. His pay was the equivalent of $36 an hour today, and all workers had a dormitory to crash in free of charge because orchard owners knew there was no way people would be able to do the work if they had to go renting accommodation.
Try that today and I bet you'll get more Kiwis signing up. But no...it's cheap, more exploitable labour that we want.
We must get the Universities to start education of civic senses/duty and raise enough educated students to stand for election or may be even start a new party. The Professors can be mentors. A revolution like that is what Universities are supposed to do.
I think Woodrow Wilson said once..The use of Universities is to make youngsters as unlike their parents as possible.
Are the Universities nowadays of any use in this sense ?
Try TOP, they speak sense on this: https://www.top.org.nz/top2
Only bring in real skilled workers, particularly Tech workers (not glorified dishwashers). Test before gaining residency of the contribution to NZ. Close doors on pathways from useless education visas.
They also want to charge you annual rent to live in your own house in the form of a wealth tax. Granny will have to take out a reverse mortgage just to afford to live in her own house in retirement. They also want to charge you on an ongoing basis for the privilege of owning all of your other major assets. And as a cherry on top they’ll proclaim that Maori own NZ’s water. Wasted vote, they won’t be getting 5%.
I was at a central city cafe this morning and 3 workers from the Commercial Bay project were there having coffee. They were whingeing about how a number of their colleagues were leaving. With such high turnover it's no wonder the project is heavily delayed.
Another interesting thing today was walking past another major construction site and walking behind 3 workers smoking joints, who then walked into the construction site for a day's work. Maybe that's why our construction is so crap.
OKAY I NEED TO BRING SOME SENSE TO THIS DEBATE ............. We do need people, not your huddles masses , not your refugees with no skills , not your drug dealers or kick boxers or fugitives from justice ( Kim Dotcom or Karel Shroubreck ) ............we want good solid peeps who can arrive under their own stream , work , add to our GDP, pay tax , stay out of jail , AND preferably speak English ...............but first we need to ensure we can house them ............. its kind of putting the cart before the horse the way we are doing things
We are facing unfortunate realities of our labour market and demographics. We need younger working immigrants to pay the bills for the baubles we’ve promised our aging voters. This cohort who are retiring at frankly too-young an age compared with ever-growing life expectancy are expensive to maintain - no means testing for pension, high demands on public healthcare, and a comparatively small tax contribution compared with younger PAYE workers.
I advertised a skilled role recently. Pay band was standard, and I received 3 dozen applications, the great majority from overseas. One or two came from locals, and the applications were poorly presented and one of those candidates didn’t even bother turning up at the appointment. I feel more and more that the average Kiwi worker is complacent.
Also this story doesn’t mention that some other categories of work visa just became more difficult today. Balances in regulation are struck by the ministry depending on our labour market feedbacks.
What is the skilled role and what is the wage. I would say Im relatively high skilled, with high specialist skills. But the problem is the wages in NZ are to low. Im coming home soon, but I will startup my own business rather then take a pay cut from wages I earn from the UK. I could go to Australia but would rather give NZ a crack, to live in.
Im sure there are workers it always comes down to wage and career path to higher wages. If you dont offer this, then NZers will look at different opportunities.
As for older people, there were very few of them and they got this country going and did a great job, its only the last 20 years or so with rampant immigration and unaffordable housing has it all gone pear shaped.
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