Twyford Phil: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTwyford Phil: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2725. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to add some comments to the debate that we have had so far about the enhanced search powers for immigration officers. What the bill does—and what one of its primary effects is—is give search powers to immigration officers so that they can search employers’ premises talk to people present to identify offending search for unlawful workers check documents and ensure that migrant workers are complying with the Immigration Act 2009. I want to take at face value the statements that have been made by members opposite particularly by Jonathan Young and by the Minister of Immigration in which they say that they are genuinely committed through this bill to putting in place a mechanism to address the exploitation of migrant workers.We can certainly agree with a couple of things that Jonathan Young said. One was that migrant labour is essential to the prosperity of our country and to the functioning of our economy and the second was that the harmful negative effects of the exploitation of migrant labour are not only that people’s human rights are being breached but also that they are undercutting other good employers and undercutting the wages and conditions of other workers in the workforce. We see plenty of evidence of that principle operating today. We have had a huge increase in student migrants who are allowed to work under the current rules. Large numbers of them are working for minimum wage rates and that has had the effect according to many observers now of driving down pay rates in those industries particularly in the fast-food joints and the service stations in Auckland. Many of those are now staffed by and large by student migrants who are getting paid minimum wage rates.I want to come back to the Minister’s statement at the beginning of this particular part of the debate where he said in response to Labour’s concerns—for example about enhanced search powers being given to immigration officers instead of labour inspectors—that he was satisfied because this is an immigration amendment bill and that labour inspectors have no power to investigate immigration offences. Well that is an entirely circular assertion. It does not take us anywhere. The proposition that we are putting up here is that if the Government is genuine—and I am happy to accept that it is—about trying to eliminate exploitation then it would be much better policy to actually give those enhanced powers to a labour inspectorate.As I was listening to the last few contributions I was thinking about experiences that I had as a young man as an organiser with what was then the northern Hotel Hospital and Restaurant Workers Union which has morphed over the years into what is now the Service and Food Workers Union. The union came across many cases actually of exploitation of migrant labour. I am thinking of one casein particular: a restaurant where there were about 20 migrant workers—many of them unlawful in terms of the rules attached to their visas—working in the restaurant and sleeping upstairs. The employer held their passports and there was what was then a vast sum—tens and tens of thousands of dollars—in unpaid wages that they were due. Those workers were reluctant to report their exploitation to the authorities but they were willing to talk to a union because they understood that the union did not have the powers of the State and was not there with a view to catching them out about immigration offences. They were willing to come to the union and as a result of that we successfully busted that operation and were able to get those workers not only the tens of thousands of dollars of unpaid wages but also the legal advocacy and support that got their immigration status regularised.That is the opposite of the kind of mechanism that is being proposed in this bill where beefed-up powers of compliance are being given to immigration officers. I think that it is just common sense to realise that workers are not going to feel comfortable. Many of us know from firsthand experience as members of Parliament that people who come to our electorate offices seeking support to help navigate their way through the immigration system and stay on the right side of the law are often incredibly vulnerable. They are absolutely powerless and their options are often very limited. To think that they would go and report exploitation in the workplace to an immigration officer who essentially has the power to have them apprehended and in some cases booted out of the country—I just think is really laughing in the face of common sense.So I would really like to hear more from the Minister about why he thinks that this kind of mechanism will make a difference. I want to come back to the point that Darien Fenton a former member of this House made in relation to this bill—that not only would labour inspectors be better able to deliver on the intent of this bill but actually the labour inspectorate has to be properly resourced in order for this to happen. I cannot help thinking that in this case the Government is kind of hobbled by its ideological preference to not have an organised and strong workforce that is capable of asserting its rights. It prefers to go down the line of beefing up immigration compliance and enforcement rather than putting in place the machinery to actually ensure that exploitation is driven out of our workplaces.