NZ Immigration Fraud Conference

Fighting Immigration Fraud

Associate Immigration Minister Damien O'Connor described how large-scale immigration fraud is a fairly new concept in New Zealand. An eight-strong investigative unit has been set up to address it.

The minister revealed that immigration fraud prosecutions have increased 65 percent in the past year to 181 at the end of May 2004. Convictions jumped 900 percent in a year, from 16 to 143. Mr O'Connor said this might reflect improved vigilance and systems.

The seriousness of the cases was illustrated by the Chinese national who recently paid $50,000 for an arranged marriage and then provided the New Zealand Immigration Service with false information about his relationship in an effort to gain residency.

Other hopeful migrants have paid between $6,000 and $8,000 to obtain false documents and upwards of $100,000 for residency.

Even more shocking are the results of marriage and job claim checks run by Risk Unit investigators. Investigations found that between 70-80 percent of job checks and 50 percent of marriage checks referred to the Unit could not be substantiated.

Last year's budget provided more funding (up almost $20 million) to the management of immigration risks, including fraud.

The Immigration Fraud Unit now comprises eight investigators. Their job is to investigate organised migrant smuggling; forgery and refugee crimes; internal corruption, etc. The Unit works with the New Zealand police, the Department of Internal Affairs, and the Serious Fraud Office.

The minister also discussed intolerance of fraud in the new Skilled Migrant Category. He said that any false or misleading information supplied in support of:
* an expression of interest, or
* a residence application
would result in the application being declined. There is no right of appeal in these cases, even if the misleading information is provided by a third party such as an agent.

A recent move also likely to impact on immigration fraud is regulation of immigration agents. Announced in May, the proposal aims to provide greater protection to people using agents' services. Agents will need to be licensed and adhere to set standards. The Immigration Service will be able to refuse applications from unlicensed agents, and agents will be penalised for operating illegally.