Migrant work visa changes to help regions struggling to fill jobs

Tuesday, 18 December 2018

Immigration Minister Ian Lees-Galloway announced proposed changes to employer-assisted temporary work visas from Ashburton, where a recent report found 500 job vacancies in the area.

The Government plans to introduce regional skills shortage lists to make it easier for migrants to fill job vacancies in regional areas.

Announcing proposed changes to employer-assisted temporary work visas on Tuesday, Immigration Minister Ian Lees-Galloway said regional skills shortage lists would replace the present system of essential skills in demand lists.

The new approach would better reflect skill shortages in regions and provide temporary migrants with a more accurate idea of regional opportunities, he said. New incentives and support for businesses to employ more New Zealanders have been proposed also.

Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says regions and industries will benefit from temporary work visa proposals.

The proposed changes were announced in Ashburton, where a recent report found there were 500 unfilled jobs in the area, which was holding back the local economy. Mid-Canterbury has traditionally relied on migrant labour to fill vacancies, but population growth in the area has not kept kept up with worker demand.

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A recent report found Ashburton in Mid Canterbury had 500 job vacancies in the area.

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In June last year, Canterbury's mayors wrote to then-Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse asking for the Government to place less focus on 'Auckland issues' and more on regional needs when it came to immigration policy.

Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says the current one-size-fits-all approach had been failing regions and industries labour needs.

Jonathan Ward, general manager of Mid Canterbury company Wilson Bulk Transport, was at Lees-Galloway's announcement. He plans to make a submission on the proposed changes.

Ward said every trucking company he knew of was in need of more drivers and, although it was worse in the regions, it was also hurting main centres like Auckland.

The dairy industry is one sector that struggles to find New Zealand workers.

There did not seem to be New Zealanders out there to fill vacancies and the situation was getting worse, he said.

About five of Wilson Bulk Transport's 30 drivers are migrants. Ward's biggest problem was the time it took to get workers from overseas.

The proposed changes represent a significant shift in how the New Zealand immigration system operates in the best interests of the economy and regions, Lees-Galloway says.

'If someone hands in their notice you've got to wait four months to get a migrant in. That just does not work.'

Lees-Galloway said the one-size-fits-all approach had been failing regions and industries with acute labour needs, while at the same time loading pressure on Auckland's infrastructure.

The system was too complex, included too many different visa options and did not adequately respond to regional or sector differences in the labour market, he said.

There were too few checks and balances on employers hiring migrants, which had led to increased migrant exploitation. New employer checks would help combat migrant exploitation, he said.

Jobs would be checked to make sure New Zealanders were not available to do them. Migrants would still have to meet character and health checks.

Employer-assisted temporary work visas are those where an employer can demonstrate there are no suitable New Zealanders available to do the work.

Around 20 per cent (or 47,000) of the 230,000 temporary work visas issued in 2017-18 were employer-assisted. The rest were issued to those on working holidays or family members of New Zealanders and recent migrants.

Changes made in August 2017 mean lower-skilled migrants who have worked in New Zealand for three years are subject to a stand-down period that requires them to leave the country for 12 months.

The idea behind that was to prevent a build-up of lower-skilled, lower-paid migrants who are well-settled but have no pathway to residence. Prior to the change, those migrants could roll over their visas indefinitely provided their jobs continued to pass a labour market test.

The review is to see if there are other ways to stop that pool of workers building up.

Other proposals include reinstating the right for lower-skilled temporary migrant workers to bring their partners and dependent children to New Zealand for the length of their stay.

Partners would be granted a visitor visa and school aged children would be granted domestic student visas for the same length of time as the principal applicant's visa. Partners would then be able to work in New Zealand if they obtain an employer-assisted work visa in their own right.

Consultation on the proposed changes is open until March 18, 2019, with an announcement on final decisions to be made by mid-2019.