The Best Intentions

Next Monday (04 July) sees the opening of our borders to workers under the new Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) scheme - a policy many years in the making. We have written about this new system previously but in a nutshell, it seeks to take six previous Work Visa policies (including our most commonly used one - the Essential Skills Visa) and combine them in to a new, employer-led, three step process:

• Employers must become Accredited with Immigration New Zealand (INZ) to bring in any new staff (from a yet to be confirmed date in 2023 this will apply to existing staff as well)

• Accredited employers then submit a job check to INZ so that the position on offer and evidence of advertising* can be reviewed.

• Once the job check is approved, the Visa applicant can submit their application for a Work Visa including those applicants offshore.

*Advertising is required for most roles, except those identified on a specific list or roles being paid over a certain salary threshold. The job check will see employment agreements, policies and documents being given much more attention than with previous policies.

For many employers who have been on the edge of their collectives seats for the last two years of closed borders, waiting to be able to bring in new staff, 04 July couldn’t come sooner. It means access to skills, labour and talent that we desparately need, albeit under a system where Employers play a much bigger role in the Visa process. Traditionally employers have had a bit of a back seat with Visas, the extent of their involvement being to provide applicants with a basic form, evidence of advertising and the job offer. Now employers need to become Accredited (involving a review of their own business operations), ensure their employment policies and documentation are squeaky clean and have that all checked, before the applicant can apply - assuming that applicant is in fact eligible.

Historically because of the lack of direct involvement in the process, employers were somewhat immune from the complications of providing any prospective migrant with advice, which is a good thing because under the current regulatory regime, unless you are licensed or exempt (and employers are usually neither) it is illegal to offer an applicant any form of advice in relation to a Visa application other than what might be publicly available. This is for good reason, because Visa rules are complicated and can apply differently to different applicants.

However with the new process being far more employer-led, will that lead to an increase in the potential for employers to cross that line?

Under previous policies, plenty of employers fell foul of the advice rules, in fact I spoke very recently to a potential client whose prospective employer had given them advice on an application which was not only incorrect but meant the applicant has potentially missed out on making the move a lot sooner. I have no doubt that the advice was offered with good intentions but like any good intentions, they don’t always add up to the best outcome.

Often employers are guilty of doing what most migrants might do and that is to assume that INZ’s website is the best source of information for any Visa application. Whilst it gives a broad outline of the options, it is far from the “single source of truth” that INZ might believe it to be. Behind the marketing gloss is a plethora of rules and criteria, most of which, people have never seen or wouldn’t know how to interpret. It is these rules which can apply to people in very different ways, based on their individual circumstances that determine who does and does not get a Visa. For the sake of clarity, here is the official reference to employers under the current licensing regulations:

Employers, recruiters, education providers and travel agents are not exempt and may become licensed. Those who do not wish to become licensed are free to assist their clients by providing them with publicly available information, as long as they are not interpreting that information or applying immigration instructions or law to a particular person.

It is one thing to point an applicant to the website (publicly available information) and say good luck and entirely another to advise an applicant as to which Visa to apply for, documents to secure, or the process to follow. It is very easy to cross from the right side of that line to the wrong one.

With the new AEWV process in place and employers taking a far more active role in the Visa process, there is the increased risk of their involvement spilling over to the individual applicant, leading to potentially disastrous outcomes. Those outcomes can impact on the applicant but also have legal ramifications for an employer if they have dispensed advice without being legally allowed to do so. The penalties for this can go as far as imprisonment or a very hefty fine.

There is also an additional risk for employers that having spent the time and energy to become Accredited, without much thought as to the next steps, that is all wasted when either their employment documents (which will be much more closely scrutinised) fail to pass muster, or the applicant they were hoping to bring across, isn’t eligible for the Visa.

The solution of course is to outsource this, which makes perfect sense and is no different to how you might outsource your recruitment, IT or any other part of your business that isn’t your speciality area. The reluctance to do so however is often based on cost or rather the perceived cost of getting some good advice to manage the process. My response to that is whether the cost of the advice is going to be more than the cost of getting it wrong. I can unconditionally guarantee any employer that they will pay more for the mistake than they will to do it properly.

Not only can you save yourself time and money with some good advice on board but you also create a much better impression for the applicant you want to bring across. Providing them with some assurances that their relocation will be handled well by someone who knows what they are doing. In the hunt for talent and skills, this sort of support is going to become even more important.

If you are in the position of needing to source skills from offshore and whether you are just starting out or have done it previously, the best advice I can offer, as we head in to this new era of Work Visa processing, is to get some good advice on board.

Talk to the team at Turner Hopkins today or visit our Workplus site and let us take care of the immigration process for you.