Work Visas Dismantled

I have been in this game long enough to recall the days when almost every inquiry I dealt with, was from people looking to apply for Residence, as their first and often only stop on the immigration train. The days of the long forgotten General Skills category where the pass mark hovered in the mid-20s, then the move to the Skilled Migrant Category, with pass marks sitting at 100 for a very long time, where having a job offer was the exception not the rule.

Gradually over the last ten years, successive Governments have moved away from a Residence first process, rewarding the potential contribution a migrant might make, towards a Residence later model, where securing work and proving that contribution took centre stage. In the current arena for skilled migrants, having a job offer is not only desirable, but essential - there are no skilled pathways available to anyone unless they have secured that all important offer of skilled employment.

Ironically, in that corresponding period, the global competition for talent has increased dramatically with New Zealand’s place as a top-tier migrant destination hanging in the balance. Don’t get me wrong, New Zealand is still highly sought after (and rightly so), however we are up against stiff competition not only in terms of our desirability but also the ease to which good quality applicants can secure Visas.

Covid obviously hasn’t helped (anything) yet as we emerge from that foggy and exhausting period, and with a new Government on board, the timing could be right to take a closer look at whether we have our settings right, or are we missing out on good quality talent, simply because we have become slavishly accustomed to this notion that migrants have to have a job and work their way towards proving their value to the country.

Conditions or Shackles?

Work Visas (most of them) tie migrants to employers, with an overly complicated process to remove those shackles.

Visas Linked To Jobs

For all skilled migrants, securing a job offer is the key to success, although for some the job is a pathway straight to Residence, whereas for many others, securing the job simply opens the door to the first step on a longer process, working their way towards that Residence outcome. Inevitably for this second (larger group), securing a Work Visa is a significant first step as it allows them to take up the job offer, make the move and start down the road to Residence, which usually reveals itself in one, two or three years. However the Work Visa itself, comes with some caveats, the most important of which is the fact that it is tied to a specific employer, to work in a specific occupation and even a specific location. In fact if your work sees you travelling between regions, your Visa will even specify the regions you are allowed to work in - ironic given how small our country is. I have previously written a more precise outline of these conditions and their impact here (if you are interested in the detail), however for this blog the question is really, whether these conditions are appropriate?

Bearing in mind that for most migrants, the Work Visa is a pathway to Residence, these conditions create an unnecessary barrier to us being able to attract the best and brightest talent and let’s face it, if a skilled applicant secures a job here and makes the move, there is a very low likelihood that they will want to sit around playing PlayStation all day, or that they will swap their role as an Engineer for someone packing supermarket shelves. Do we really care, if the Software Developer who has just arrived in Auckland on a $100K salary, decides that they would prefer to take a better job, doing the same thing in Wellington, given we have already recognised there is a shortage of these candidates (globally). Yet, under current settings, we make this applicant, go through a bizarre process to change their Visa - swapping one set of conditions (shackles) for another.

Granted, there are some situations in which these conditions would be appropriate, particularly for lower skilled roles, where there is less evidence of a shortage, and in these cases we might not want applicants having the flexibility to move around. Yet in terms of how our Visa process works, if they are paid the median wage, even if the skill levels are low, they have a five year Visa, which arguably undermines the nature of a temporary Visa to fill a temporary labour market gap.

The conditions attached to Visas are applied to all Accredited Employer Work Visas, without much thought as to whether that makes any sense and in my view it doesn’t. We could be smarter about this, giving the higher quality applicants (the ones we want to keep) a more flexible system, as they potentially work their way towards that Residence goal.

Alternative Options

There are always better ways to do things - the question is do we need a few tweaks or a major system overhaul?

A Better Way?

No system will ever be perfect and that is specifically true for our immigration process. No matter how clever you think a setting or settings are, there are always winners and losers. But I do have a suggestion that would potentially be an easy win for applicants and for INZ. Instead of applying Work Visa conditions to all applicants, we should consider how different applicants might end up with different conditions, that free them up to move around within the labour market, but ultimately keeping them here, in skilled employment with the view to retaining those skills longer term. Here are my thoughts on how that could work:

• Where an applicant has a Work Visa for a lower skilled role (regardless of wage rate) or a skilled role paid below median wage, keep the existing conditions in place and reduce the timeframe allowed on this Visa to 12 months. This creates a greater incentive for employers to use this Visa process as a temporary measure, with a view to training locally.

• For an applicant holding a Work Visa to work in an occupation on the Green List, the conditions should stipulate that they must work in that ‘sector’ (not the specific occupation) and be able to work for any Accredited Employer in any region. If we have identified that their is a shortage, do we care who that candidate works for and where - as long as they are still filling that shortage.

• For applicants that secure work that is not on the Green List, but are paid at or above the median and they have a clear pathway to Residence (which we can identify when the Work Visa is issued), the conditions would allow the candidate to move to a new Accredited Employer, in the same position, in the same region, but only in the event that they lose their job due to circumstances beyond their control (e.g. redundancy or restructuring).

We could make this even simpler by removing our reliance on the median wage as a proxy for skills and simply rely on the skill level the applicant brings to the country when they first apply, however even the above changes would open the system up somewhat, allow applicants a greater degree of flexibility and then ultimately certainty of their ability to reach their goal of Residence.

Good quality migrants and good quality employers generally stick together until it just isn’t economically practical and the unfounded fear that migrants will come here one job, only to move around continuously into lower skilled roles, shouldn’t overly influence our process.

A Stronger Link

Given the importance of jobs in the Resident Visa process, could we create a better pathway to link the two?

Work Visas & Residence

Given the importance of the Work Visa to securing Residence for most skilled migrants, we need to take a closer look at how these two systems are linked. The above easing of conditions would help, but we could go further.

For instance, under the current skilled migration (points) pathway we require applicants with certain skills to work for one, two or three years, before securing Residence, yet there is no definable logic as to why we have those three tiers. As an example, a software developer with a bachelor degree and ten years of experience, being paid $100K per annum would need to work here for three years, yet another applicant, with the same role, salary of $70K, only two years of experience but with a PhD could apply for Residence immediately. The value of the first applicant is significantly higher in terms of experience and contribution than the first, yet their pathway to Residence is far longer.

If what we are aiming to do is bring in skilled, employable people who will stick around longer term, then why not level the playing field. Set a bar, but make that bar the same for all applicants brave enough to run the job search and Visa gauntlet. We can still have criteria to ensure that we are aiming for the right skill level and we can still test that commitment by imposing a minimum work experience period for everyone of 12 months. This is how the previous points system worked, by allowing applicants to demonstrate value in various ways, but all of them having the same pathway to the end goal. Admittedly that system wasn’t perfect either, given it was overly complicated, with too many factors for INZ to assess, but there is an easy middle ground available - somewhere between the old and the new.

If we are going to insist on placing employment at the front and centre of an applicant’s eligibility we could be a lot smarter about how all of those steps link together in respect of the Work Visa, the conditions imposed and how that leads to Residence.

Instead of layering change upon change and fiddling with settings here and there, we should strip back the process to identify where the value lies, and then create a system that recognizes that value but removes the bureaucratic nightmare that is INZ’s processing system.

While we are staring down the barrel of further changes to our AEWV (Work Visa) system, to be announced by the Minister fairly shortly, I doubt those changes will encompass anything as radical as the above - however now might be as good a time as any to consider them.

Until next week.