IMMIGRATION LAW UPDATE RACHAEL MASON
Immigration compliance: what is it, and why is it important?
Rachael Mason, Partner at Lane Neave, provides an overview of immigration compliance and why it is so important for employers of migrant workers.
W
hether you have one migrant worker employee or many, if your organisation’s operations are not squeaky clean when it comes to ensuring you are immigration compliant, the impact can be far-reaching.
What is immigration compliance?
As an employer, you have an obligation to ensure that your employees have the legal right to work at your organisation and, importantly, that they have the right to work in the specific role that you have offered to them. Maintaining immigration compliance requires careful monitoring of the visa conditions of work visa holders as well as the expiry dates. Depending on the size of your business and the number of migrant workers employed, it will be necessary to develop appropriate systems and processes to ensure you are able to maintain your company’s immigration compliance. A large number of different visas allow the holder to work in New Zealand, and understanding what the different categories are and what they entitle the holder to 34
HUMAN RESOURCES
AUTUMN 2020
do is an essential component of maintaining immigration compliance. Examples of non-compliance include: • allowing students to work more than the allowable 20 hours per week during term time and full time during vacation periods • allowing a migrant worker to work in a location other than that stated on their work visa (for example, to provide ‘sickness cover’ while a person based in Queenstown is unwell, you redeploy their counterpart from Dunedin to cover the position temporarily) • changing the terms and conditions of employment where the work visa has not first been updated (for example, a change
of job role, such as a promotion, where a further work visa or variation of conditions application should have been made prior to the changes taking effect) • allowing employees to continue to work while on an interim visa (where the terms of the interim visa do not permit work) • allowing employees to work for another company within your group of companies (but not the company named on their work visa). Lane Neave has worked with several employers who have either inadvertently allowed these situations to happen or where it has been more deliberate. For example, in some situations, a line manager or business
