A businesswoman who tried to get a residency visa by claiming she would provide the country with two full-time jobs was found to have underpaid staff.
The 55-year-old, who is originally from China, runs a wholesaler and retailer of energy efficient lighting products.
The company has employed a number of staff since 2014, two of whom currently work there.
The woman applied for residency under the Business (Entrepreneur Residence Visa) category, but Immigration New Zealand (INZ) declined her application after it discovered she had breached employment law.
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The woman appealed the decision to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, but lost the case.
INZ had discovered discrepancies in the pay of five people she had employed between January 2015 and November 2018. The underpayments ranged from $7 to $796.
The agency also believed some of her employees may not have been paid at the correct minimum wage rate.
Immigration staff were concerned about the credibility of some of the documents the woman had provided to support her application, including wages and time records which did not match information held by the IRD.
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The woman’s application for a residency visa was declined after INZ found she had underpaid staff and failed to keep appropriate employment records (file photo).
INZ was not satisfied that the business had kept sufficient holiday and leave records for employees and informed the woman about its concerns regarding her application.
A month later, in August 2019, the woman’s lawyer contacted INZ claiming the woman’s business complied with all its legal obligations and had fixed the “minor breaches” raised by INZ.
The lawyer provided a letter from an accountant who wrote that he had recalculated the employees’ annual leave entitlements and found a few errors in the information provided to the IRD, which had since been corrected.
Any underpayments in leave had been paid to employees, the accountant said. However, no evidence of this was provided to INZ.
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The records the woman provided to INZ did not match information held by the IRD about the business, according to a decision by the Immigration and Protection Tribunal.
INZ did not accept the accountant’s explanation.
Instead, INZ staff believed the wages and time records had been written after INZ had requested them.
They also did not agree with the lawyer’s assessment the employment law breaches were “minor” because of how long the business had failed to meet its obligations and the number of incidents of non-compliance.
After INZ declined the woman’s application for residency, the woman instructed a new lawyer who lodged an appeal with the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, arguing that INZ had not made the correct decision or had failed to take into account “special circumstances” in the case.
However, the tribunal sided with INZ.
“The Tribunal finds that on the evidence before it, Immigration New Zealand was correct to find that the appellant had not kept satisfactory holiday and leave records,” the tribunal’s decision read.
It agreed with INZ that the documents the woman provided, including individual employment agreements, bank statements and wages and time records, had been prepared only after INZ raised concerns with her application.
The tribunal dismissed the woman’s appeal.
