Logie Jan: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1438. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): It is with a degree of frustration and disappointment that I rise to take this call and inform this House that the Green Party can no longer support this bill as we did at its first reading. Like the Labour Party and the Government we agree there is a problem in this country with the exploitation of migrant workers. In November 2013 when this bill was introduced to the House we shared in this House quite a few stories of the exploitation of workers. We know that this is a very significant problem in this country where workers are being told they will be fired unless they work for nothing. Over the weekends they are being kept almost as slaves in some situations in slum accommodations and have outrageous rent being deducted from their wages for those accommodations. People are being paid well below the minimum wage and they are trapped in that situation. So there was a dire need for this legislation; there really was.As has already been mentioned on the National Party side this legislation is important for the protection of those workers but it is also important for the protection of our economy and the assurance that there will be a level playing field for businesses in New Zealand because those businesses that are upholding the minimum standards which are not really that high in this country of protection of workers should not be competing with other businesses that are not keeping to those minimum standards. They are at a disadvantage in that scenario. We need legislation to rectify that. So we were keen on going into the select committee process to find out what we could do to make sure that this legislation addressed that need.We spoke to and worked very closely with the union of migrant workers to check with it through the progress of this legislation as to whether we should be supporting this bill. Sadly—sadly—through all of that process we find ourselves in a situation where we are unable to support this legislation. Although it does penalise employers and puts a cost on breaking the laws which is very good and very important it does not provide the protection for workers to be able to come forward and report the exploitation. If it was just the fact that it was putting on penalties and did not have negative aspects to it we would probably support it. But also hidden in this bill are a lot of unrelated measures that are pernicious and that actually breach what I consider are basic standards of law and good legislation. The issues were raised by the Legislation Advisory Committee which advised against what this bill is doing. I would like to run through some of those things.We had a message from submitters that as most people in this situation of being exploited are on temporary visas to enable people to come forward and report abuse you need to guarantee them the protection of their visa for a period so as to enable them to look for another job if they lose that job because otherwise reporting risks them being sent home. They will lose that job probably because that employer with these penalties will no longer be in a position to employ them. So you have to ensure that they have a job and the protection to be able to stay here and to be able to come forward. The Government adamantly refused to offer that. So there is no commitment to actually enable people to come forward.Secondly what this does is it provides the Immigration Service not the Labour Group with powers of search into private residential properties without a search warrant. This is the country that has a very bleak history of dawn raids and a very real memory within vulnerable communities in this country of having being targeted by the Immigration Service. This bill introduces extended powers of search into residential properties by the Immigration Service not the Labour Group. Surely if your focus was on protecting employment rights you would have given those powers or considered those powers for the Labour Group not the Immigration Service. When we raised those questions through the select committee process we were told that that was a policy decision. There was no answer for why it was being given to the Immigration Service bar the fact that it was a policy decision. Basically that is this Government’s agenda. Who knows what is behind that. Honestly if I was in that community I would be worried because a lot of communities do feel vulnerable in relation to the Immigration Service. If we care about the protection of vulnerable workers we need to be enforcing and strengthening our labour systems.Another aspect of this bill that is not being talked about so much and it is not really related to the protection of vulnerable workers at all is a very very strange provision that will enable the Immigration Service to deport people who have residency if somebody has found something in their visa application that was incorrect. They do not even have to have known it was incorrect themselves. It does not have to have been a lie. But if somebody finds something in their original application that was incorrect even if it does not relate to the reason they were granted their visa this bill enables those people to be deported. That is extraordinary. We were strongly advised to remove that by immigration practitioners the Legislation Advisory Committee and the New Zealand Law Society. Basically it creates a strict liability provision and removes the causal link that enables deportation at the moment where the false information is related to the reason that their visa was given. Already we have a law that enables somebody to be deported if they lied or provided false information and that led to them being given a visa.What this says is that anything in their entire application if they got it wrong—even if they did not know they had it wrong—has no relevance to the granting of their visa and if they have been here for 9 years the Government can deport them. That is extraordinary—absolutely extraordinary. We asked the officials why we cannot change this. It is because there is the ability for somebody if the decision has been made to be able to appeal to the Minister of Immigration to challenge that decision on all sorts of grounds. When we ask why this is in there we were given no reason. There has not been an increase in false information in people’s applications. The officials really struggled to give even one example of where this has happened. They did give one that did not seem particularly worrying to anyone on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and we were all just basically a bit bewildered about what on earth this was about.At the suggestion of the committee chair and with the support of other committee members I wrote to the Minister and asked that the Minister might want to reconsider this. Firstly there does not seem to be any reason for it. Secondly we had been given strong advice that it is not a good idea. And thirdly it has got the potential to increase bureaucracy and burden on an already overwhelmed system if false information has been identified and then somebody appeals and it goes to the Minister or it goes to the tribunal. Those systems are completely overwhelmed already and now this is adding another level of burden on to those stretched systems for something that we have not even been given a case for. But the Minister’s response was that he was not interested. So it really is beyond me what on earth that is about in this bill.Also we were advised against the fact that this creates a levy that the Legislation Advisory Committee suggested we change because it is basically kind of setting up a tax system. There is no direct identification around what that levy is going to be used for which is typically good legislation. If you are going to levy something that is not just a general tax then you identify very specifically what you are wanting to use it for and it does not do that. So it is kind of setting up an alternative tax system within our immigration system to fund services that are overwhelmed and this is going to overwhelm them even more because the Government has not funded them properly. So it has very little to do with the very urgent problem of protecting our migrant workers. It is distressing not to be able to support it.