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Visa categories create lesser forms of residency

Morgan Godfery Senior lecturer at the University of Otago

The shift in immigration policy . . . seems to make little sense.

One of the important things the pandemic exposed was that the distinction between ‘‘highly skilled’’ and ‘‘poorly skilled’’ workers is more or less meaningless. The only designation that matters is ‘‘essential workers’’.

Is a lawyer, for example, any more important than a horticultural worker? The former is certainly a skilled worker, but does their law degree make them any more skilled than the latter?

As fruit rotted on the vine during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, decreasing export receipts and forcing some businesses to the edge, the answer is surely no. Essential workers – horticultural workers as well as supermarket workers, nurses and doctors, and more – were the people who held the economy and society on their shoulders.

And so the Government’s shift in immigration policy, prioritising highly skilled workers over socalled poorly skilled workers, seems to make little sense.

If the pandemic taught us anything it is that it’s impossible to cut clean lines between the people whom an economy and society need to function and the people who are, of course, important, but secondary to the good functioning of that economy and society.

What makes a lawyer more worthy than a hotel worker? The lawyer would find it easier to gather sufficient points to win a Skilled Migrant Category Resident Visa, but as any Auckland or Queenstown business owner could tell you, the worker shortage is in the hotel and accommodation sector. Why should immigration policy, then, favour the former?

Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi might argue that this is an oversimplification. Hoteliers can still hire workers from overseas, bringing them to the country under the Accredited Employer Work Visa. Horticulturalists can still hire workers from overseas too, bringing them to the country under the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme.

But this is precisely the point – these visa categories are secondary forms of residency. Under the RSE scheme, for example, workers fly in from the Pacific, work for their employer for a set period, and fly out after that period concludes. RSE workers cannot apply for residency under the scheme, even as the pandemic reinforced their importance to the economy.

In 2021-22 the RSE cap was increased to 16,000 in an admission that employers were still struggling to find New Zealanders willing to work on orchards for the minimum wage. And so, to fill that gap, thousands of workers disembark from flights from the Pacific, work their set period on the orchards, and then re-embark for home.

In one sense, this helps those workers provide for their families. They earn a wage that they otherwise might not have. But in another sense, it encourages their very exploitation. In 2020 Newsroom found one employer threatening to withhold plane trips and allowances from RSE workers.

In 2009, when the scheme was still fresh, the media uncovered stories where employers were deducting ‘‘expenses’’ from workers, driving their take-home pay below the minimum wage. These deductions were to pay for things like ‘‘accommodation’’ and ‘‘airfares’’ – expenses employers were meant to cover.

This reflects poorly on those rotten employers, sure. But the proper culprit is government policy. RSE workers find it difficult to access any recourse. When their visas expire their work does too, and there is no pathway to residency. That means RSE workers are disposable. One cohort flies in in 2022. Another cohort flies in in 2023. And on it goes.

The trouble with the Government’s immigration reforms is that they entrench this two-tier system. So-called highly skilled immigrants are offered generous pathways to residency. But so-called poorly skilled workers are left to cycle in and out of the country without a similarly generous pathway to residency. Or, in the case of RSE workers, without a pathway to residency at all.

Surely the lesson of the pandemic is that RSE workers, as well as hotel and hospitality workers who enter the country under the Accredited Employer Work Visa, are essential. The implication of that is obvious: if these workers are essential, then the Government should treat them as such.

But Faafoi’s recent reforms reinforce the very system that treats essential workers as somehow less than traditionally ‘‘higher skilled’’ migrants. This two-tier system should not continue. If it does, come another lockdown, or perhaps another virus, and fruit rots on the vine again, we’ll wonder why we tolerated a system as inflexible as the RSE scheme.

Opinion

en-nz

2022-05-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281887301913970

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