O'Connor Greg; Stanford Erica; Menéndez March Ricardo; Little AndrewCHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Erica Stanford. Can I just invite the member—I noticed when she sat down last time there were a number of questions and comments. If she—and other members as well—wanted to have a more interactive with the Minister then I'll be able to allocate questions accordingly. But the members can use their time how they like; it is a timed debate. That's just a piece of advice from the Chair. ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Chair. A couple of quick questions: can I ask the Minister in the chair with the post-accreditation checks how many accreditations have been taken away—removed? Of the 516 that have been checked—out of 27000—how many have been removed? He mentioned that they could be removed how many have been removed?My second question is: are all employers who are applying for accreditation providing documentation? Given that the Accredited Employer Risk Management and Review (AERMR) team is finding that many of them haven't what is his expectation? And if his expectation is that not all employers are providing the documentation i.e. the 12 months of operation or the financial stability what percentage are providing that information according to some of the post-accreditation checks that have been done? My third question is around those agents overseas and the question is: is he aware that they are working in cahoots with employers here because of this system that allows companies to be accredited with very little checks and jobs that are being advertised for no skill no qualification and therefore nothing to verify at Immigration New Zealand when the migrant applies for their visa? So the whole reason for the explosion in offshore agents acting in a nefarious way is because of this system that allows them to do that; when there are very little checks going on and those what I call zero-zero contracts"—no skills no qualification—job ads being done. Is he aware of that? And what plans has he got to work in the Accredited Employer Work Visa system to try and stamp that out? Is it around checking more businesses who are applying or stamping down on jobs that require no skill no qualification or doing more checks and more verifications of migrants when they apply for their visa?RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. Just on the issue of exploitation I guess I wanted to check whether the Minister agrees that tying work visas to a single employer is a contributing factor to exploitation and if so whether any work around this practice is under way or considered in the future as part of preventing exploitation as well? I wanted to also ask about the parent category visa and particularly with the processing times for that visa specifically and what are the Minister's goals for the number of parent visas that are going to be processed in this coming year? Particularly for those people that have been waiting for a substantial amount of time who at the time of application their parents would have been in good health but by the time the visa is finally now being considered and they have to sit medical checks then their health may have changed whether any consideration's being done around making sure that those delays don't then contribute to creating additional barriers for you know parents who through no fault of their own had to wait several years to have that visa being pulled up? So—thank you.Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Immigration): Thank you Mr Chair. To Erica Stanford's questions about post-accreditation checks. First of all how many have been removed: I don't have that number and officials haven't been able to provide it to me. I know that a small number have been removed because I have seen some periodic reporting of accreditation having been removed from a small number of employers. The second question is are all employers providing the documentation? They have to provide information make declarations and provide information to Immigration New Zealand in order to be accredited and so the relevant information in order to be accredited is being provided. And the third question which relates to the relationship between employers and—I think the question relates really to rogue employers here and the relationship with dodgy agents overseas. It is not a requirement for employers seeking accreditation here to disclose their relationships with either agents or other nefarious operators offshore. And that would be a step too far I would have thought. But if as a consequence of regular conduct it becomes clear that an employer here has relationships with people offshore who are aiding and abetting the exploitation of people here then the employer here will be in the gun. So that is the check and balance on that. In relation to the questions from Ricardo Menéndez March first of all the question about time: the accredited employer visa to the employer. The Accredited Employer Work Visa was a process to allow employers here to employ from offshore. So they get accredited they get the approval to be an employer who can employ from overseas or least to employ a visa holder. The role or roles into which the employer wants to employ those workers is checked off as being one for which the employer has failed to—after reasonable efforts—get a New Zealander to occupy and then the employer is entitled to recruit offshore and Immigration New Zealand then provides that worker with a visa to pick up that job. It would defeat the purpose of the exercise—which is an immigration system tailored to meet labour market needs—for the visa not to relate to the particular employer who's gone through the effort of getting accredited and getting the job checked out and recruiting the worker. So we don't intend to change that aspect of the scheme. But the safeguard against exploitation is that if something does go wrong—if the worker is dismissed then they can go on to a dismissed worker visa. If they are the victim of migrant exploitation they can go on to a migrant exploitation protection visa. Moving to those visas can happen reasonably swiftly and so they are afforded that level of protection. So we don't intend to change that. In relation to parent visas the member will know that there is a cap on those—2500 of those parent visas per year. So the process at the moment is taking some months to process those. But they are oversubscribed—that is the reality. I've just been given some information about the time so as of 24 July this year so just slightly more than one week ago there had been just over 1400 invitations to apply for those visas as a result of applications made onshore and that started in November last year. Of those 968 applications have been submitted and 107 have been decided. So there's still some in train to get decided but we know that that is an area of great stress for many migrant families here who want parents protected to come here. We'll work within the cap we have the processing under way and we're doing the best we can to meet those families' needs."