Bayly Andrew: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is subject to correctionBayly Andrew: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3097. Text is subject to correction.]ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua):It is a pleasure to be talking on this third reading of the Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2). Immigration and the people and the systems that monitor and manage it are vitally important to New Zealand. It is crucial that we welcome our migrants look after them protect them and give them the same rights as all New Zealanders. The skills that they bring and the expertise that they offer are very important in terms of helping all of us in New Zealand to grow and prosper here in New Zealand. They contribute directly in terms of not only their skills but often the capital and intellectual properties that they bring. Of course it is easy to understand why we are having this conversation and dealing with this issue. When you look back in 2011 we had just on 15500 immigrants who came into Auckland. This is expected to rise to nearly 48000 by the end of this year. I do note that these figures do include some New Zealanders returning home to New Zealand.To bring these figures into life in my electorate we rely heavily on skilled migrants helping some of the industries. One of the most important industries in my electorate is the horticulture sector. We have got the cropping sector which employs hundreds of people and generates roughly about $250 million in export sales a year. I have also got the glasshouse growing industry which again generates about $150 million and employs roughly 1500 people in my electorate. Many of the people involved in assisting those companies working in those industries are migrants who come into New Zealand with great skills particularly with the dexterity to pick a number of the crops to go up high on lifting equipment to drive the tractors and to do all those sorts of things that help to make horticulture in Pukekohe in particular a very successful growing industry. Migrants can be very important not only at an industry level but at a particular company level.One example my predecessor had to deal with was an excellent Indian migrant worker who worked in the glasshouse construction and maintenance sector with a particular company in my electorate. The reason he was so good was not only was he very happy to work at heights and he was physically light but he was also very good working with metal and glass. His ability to scale and construct those glasshouses—Hon Simon Bridges: He sounds like spiderman.ANDREW BAYLY: Very close to it I am sure. He was pivotal in terms of the development of that company. Unfortunately by the time we got to hear about him his visa had expired and he had to return overseas. But with the support of that employer we managed to get that person back and now that company has grown substantially. It is now not only working in New Zealand but has successful operations in Australia and is now a very successful company. One of the conditions for him to return to New Zealand was that that company had to also employ another person who had the back-up skills to be able to do the same type of work. That is a classic example of where it was very helpful in terms of growing that New Zealand business.However it is not always great outcomes that we can talk about and this bill is obviously about dealing with some of those other outcomes. I want to talk about just two areas: international students who are often given work visas to work up to 20 hours a week and also those migrants who come in under the essential skills category. If migrants in either of these groups actually do something that breaches their consent conditions then they are obviously liable for deportation. At the end of the day there is an imbalance between those types of migrant workers working here legitimately and employers. If there is an employer who wants to take advantage of them there is a strong imbalance of power. That imbalance of power is often demonstrated because when they come to renew their visa they need the support of that employer. That imbalance of power is something that this bill is seeking to deal with.The flip side of dealing with immigration is that the controls and procedures that we put in place under the terms of this immigration legislation must make sure that those migrant workers are protected and given the same rights as all New Zealand workers. At present the Immigration Act offers no protection to migrant workers who work in accordance with their visa status. I just want to say that again. At present the Immigration Act offers no protection to migrant workers who work in accordance with their visa status. At present those employers who exploit unlawful migrant workers face heavy sanctions but those persons who exploit lawful migrant workers are less severely penalised. It is interesting reading the impact statement to this bill and the case of the two massage therapists who came to New Zealand. What happened was those two ladies came here. The employment agreement under which they were supposedly brought into New Zealand was provided to the Immigration Service. What happened was as soon as they arrived in New Zealand they were made to sign a much more onerous employment agreement that meant that they were working between 6 and 7 days a week up to 10 hours every day. They were actually forced to stay in the room and sleep on their massage beds and they were paid a miserly $100 to $200 a week. They were left in that invidious situation so eventually they left that employer and sought employment elsewhere. Under the current Immigration Act that situation did not meet the criteria for exploitation and this is what this bill is trying to deal with.This bill deals with the screening and monitoring of foreigners living and working in our country and ensures they are meeting the conditions of their work visas. To protect our migrant workers severe penalties are introduced in this bill whereby those employers who do operate in a totally inappropriate way can face fines of up to $100000 or 7 years in jail or both. It is interesting that migrants who are also employers are now able to be deported if the exploiting occurred within 10 years of their gaining residency here in New Zealand. I note a comment in the labour inspectorate and Immigration New Zealand report that it is common that many of the employers who do exploit migrant workers are themselves former migrants. Of course this bill is dealing with that. The penalties reflect the seriousness of the exploitation offences and demonstrate the tough action that this Government wants to undertake. We are not prepared to allow the illegal treatment of migrant workers to continue.The bill provisions will also encourage migrants if they are in invidious situations and are finding that they are being exploited to come forward under a situation where by doing so and if they collaborate with the immigration department their current status is not going to be denigrated by coming forward to Immigration New Zealand and letting the department know about these employers who are exploiting other people. We are also extending the power to search not only to deal with exploitation in the workplace and in the home but also to deal with what happens at the airport to make sure that we can get all of the relevant documentation. The proposed amendments also enable technological changes to be made so that our immigration officers can be far more effective in doing their jobs. It is really important particularly at airports that we give our immigration officers the power to make sure that arriving passengers are subject to the due tests and that we can test and check the patterns and trends of what is happening with migrant flow because it will lead to better protection of our national borders. The biometrical measures continue which I think are a really good idea. One of the things that specifically relates to biometrical measures is that when migrant workers have been deported on reasonable proper grounds we can then force them to give us the biometrical data that we need to make sure that they do not return to our shores.In my view this is a great bill. It is seeking to deal with a significant problem. We like migrant workers coming into New Zealand but we do want to make sure that they have the same rights as New Zealand workers. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.