December 2019 Newsletter
Message from the Registrar
Tēnā koutou katoa
I hope you are finding some time to enjoy the warmer weather and wind down for the Christmas and New Year period.
I have some news. I will be taking up one of the roles of operations manager border at INZ (Auckland) as of 6 January 2020.
This role has been enjoyable, not least of which has been the interaction I have had with passionate licensed advisers who share our statutory responsibility of protecting the consumers of immigration advice and New Zealand’s reputation as a migration destination. I am looking forward to the new role however I will miss many aspects of being the Registrar of Immigration Advisers. I am pleased to be staying in the MBIE family and no doubt our paths may cross again.
I am pleased to announce that Simon van Weeghel has been appointed the Registrar of Immigration Advisers (acting), and in the New Year a full recruitment process will be undertaken. Simon brings over a decade of experience in the public sector, and for the last two and a half years has worked at the IAA as an investigator specialising in complaints against licensed immigration advisers. Prior to this Simon worked in various roles for the New Zealand Customs Service and Aviation Security Service, including six years at Auckland airport where he worked closely with Immigration New Zealand to identify non-compliance at the border.
Simon is well known and well regarded by the industry so I hope you will welcome Simon to his acting role in the warm way that I was welcomed when I started.
The work programme I have developed with many of you (including those of you that generously donated your time on our licensed adviser reference group) will be maintained, including in-time; a review of the competency standards. Our business will continue as usual and I am pleased to advise that we have recently grown in number at the Authority.
Our 2019 webinars remain available to view, in this newsletter you will also find an expression of interest process for the 2020 Licensed Adviser Reference Group and some new resources to support employees and employers from Employment New Zealand.
I would like to thank you for your commitment to acting in the best interest of those that receive immigration advice and for your support of me as Registrar during my term.
I hope you all have a very safe and enjoyable Christmas and New Year and return with the same passion you brought to your work in 2019.
Keep well and keep our standards high.
Ngā mihi
Andrew Galloway, Registrar of Immigration Advisers
Andrew Galloway
Registrar of Immigration Advisers
Join the 2020 Licensed Immigration Adviser Reference Group
We are calling for expressions of interest from licensed immigration advisers to join the Authority’s 2020 Reference Group, to be held in Auckland.
The purpose of the Licensed Advisers Reference Group is to help immigration adviser licensing to work better for advisers through their regular input.
We will select licensed immigration advisers from across the licensed adviser community. Immigration New Zealand representative(s) and other invitees may also attend the meetings.
The Authority will cover the New Zealand travel costs for advisers, but not any international travel costs.
Those in New Zealand need to commit to each of the four meetings on the following Wednesdays from 10.15am – 3pm:
- Wednesday 25 March 2020
- Wednesday 27 May 2020
- Wednesday 26 August 2020
- Wednesday 28 October 2020
To register your interest, please email us at info@iaa.govt.nz by 30 January 2020 with“Reference Group” in the subject line. You may include a cover letter (or include in the email) identifying how you might meet the following criteria. In your email please also tell us:
- if you are in New Zealand, that you are available for and committed to attending each meeting
- if you are offshore, which meetings you could attend in person
- where you are located
- the size of the business you work for
- what areas of immigration you mainly work in
- what current issues relating to the Authority’s work you are interested in discussing.
A terms of reference for the group is here [PDF, 38 KB]
In considering reference group membership, the IAA will use the following criteria as a guide.
| Criterion | Group Composition |
|---|---|
| Relevance of technical skills and knowledge | Membership will reflect the specialist technical skills and knowledge required to support the reference group. |
| Personal attributes | Members should have good team work, listening, and problem solving skills, be results-oriented and open-minded (i.e. informed but not constrained by past experiences and current ways of working). |
| Experience and Credibility | It is essential that the Group be respected as being capable of delivering high quality advice, and that individual members are seen as being capable of making a positive contribution. Consequently, a good track record/reputation is important. |
| Links into relevant initiatives | Where appropriate, the Group will include members with connections into other relevant initiatives to identify potential synergies, avoid duplication of effort, and share/build expertise. |
| Time and ability to contribute | To provide assurance of their ability to make time available to contribute, members must be able to commit to the schedule of meetings. |
| No detrimental conflicts of interest | Conflicts of interest will be managed by way of disclosure. It is essential that members do not have any conflicts of interest that may interfere with their ability to contribute objectively. |
Updates from Toi Ohomai
Work placements
Students completing the Graduate Diploma in New Zealand Immigration Advice have the option of taking a work placement course in the second half of their studies. The purpose of the work placement course is to give students an opportunity to observe and reflect on the professional practice of a licensed adviser and to discuss real situations with a licensed adviser. It gives them an opportunity to see first-hand the daily challenges and professional practices of a licensed adviser. Both advisers and students who have participated so far have given very positive feedback about the experience and encouraged others to give it a go. Work placements can only take place where a student can attend the physical premises of the licensed adviser. They cannot be done virtually.
Work placements run for 13 weeks in semester one and two each academic year. Students are expected to spend a minimum of 80 hours for the duration of the placement. Students are not to be paid for their time on work placements, unless they are an existing employee of the company, and similarly they are not expected to pay to do the work placement. The placement itself cannot be considered to be a trial period for employment purposes; there would need to be a separate employment agreement for that. When you agree to take on a student for a work placement, an agreement is signed between yourself, the student and Toi Ohomai so everyone is clear about their role. There are specific obligations on students regarding confidentiality and intellectual property.
For all the information you need to know, check out Toi Ohomai’s Work Placement Handbook.
Download the 2020 Handbook [PDF, 238 KB]
GDNZIA not for profit scholarship
Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology offers one scholarship each year for a student of the Graduate Diploma in New Zealand Immigration Advice who intends to provide New Zealand immigration advice on a not-for-profit basis while working or volunteering for a not-for-profit organisation in New Zealand. The scholarship will cover the student’s domestic tuition fees for the one year Graduate Diploma.
Before applying to Toi Ohomai for the scholarship, the applicant must have their not-for-profit status pre-approved by the Authority.
Details on how to apply are available here
Note that there is also information about the scholarship here(external link)
Toi Ohomai industry partnership
In 2020 Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology will establish a GDNZIA industry partnership group. The group will be made up of GDNZIA programme staff, a representative from the IAA and those working in the immigration advice industry. Broadly, the group will provide a forum for industry feedback and discussion of issues relating to graduate outcomes and the content and delivery of the programme. The group will meet once or twice a year and meetings will be held online. At this time Toi Ohomai is seeking expressions of interest from those in the industry who would like to join the industry partnership group. If you are interested in participating, please email Appley Boyd with a brief outline of why you wish to join and how you can contribute. Expressions of interest must be received no later than 20 December 2019.
New Employee rights module from Employment New Zealand for employees
Employment New Zealand has launched a new free e-module: An Introduction to Your Employment Rights(external link), which makes knowing your employee rights easy. The target audience for the new module are Employees (current and future), including: Secondary students, School leavers, Tertiary students, International students, Trainees and Workers in industry training, Migrants and Vulnerable workers.
This new tool can help the Immigrations Advisers educate future and current employees to be empowered, and in turn have more positive careers and employment relationships. I would recommend that Licenced Advisers complete this introductory module first as part of their CPD prior to attempting any of the existing advanced modules.
In brief, the module covers a 30-minute online lesson and short quiz, plus a certificate for those who complete it. It is available in six languages: English, Samoan, Hindi, Mandarin, Tagalog and Korean; and has voice overs in all six languages for users who prefer to listen to rather than read, the content.
If you want to market this to the potential employees the following can be used in your communications:
Empower yourself and stand up for your employment rights!
Employment New Zealand has launched the new Introduction to your employment rights learning module.
This free module will help you as a current or future worker in five key ways:
- Know and remember your employment rights.
- It’s easy! Learn with fun activities, voice overs so you don’t have to read if that’s your preference, and translations in five languages: Chinese, Hindi, Samoan, Tagalog and Korean.
- Empower you to raise issues with your employer.
- Help you sort out issues early when they are small and prevent them from growing big.
- Test yourself and be assured you understood the key points from the quiz.
Your registration also gives access to further modules for your ongoing learning.
Sign up now at https://employment.elearning.ac.nz/(external link)
Tribunal decisions
There have been a number of Tribunal decisions recently where serious grounds of dishonest or misleading behaviour have been upheld:
- In INZ (Greathead) v Ortiz [2019] NZIACDT 59, an adviser was found to have misled INZ by claiming that a client was working as an unpaid volunteer, when in reality the client was being exploited by his employer (who was also the adviser’s husband).
- In KBN v Wharekura [2019] NZIACDT 66, an adviser’s licence was suspended as he admitted to falsifying emails showing he had a made a special direction request for a client, when he had not done so.
- In FBN v Broadway [2019] NZIACDT 70, an adviser presented a false written agreement to the IAA for inspection which was purportedly signed by a client, but in reality the adviser had copied the client’s signature.
- In Registrar of IAA v Ryan [2019] NZIACDT 75, an adviser was found to have organised fake job offers for migrants through a company he directed, as well as communicating with INZ using a false employee name.
The Tribunal stated previously in Chand v Shearer [2016] NZIACDT 57 regarding a complaint involving dishonest or misleading behaviour: “[12] The starting point is that the finding of dishonest and misleading behaviour would result in orders affecting [the adviser’s] licence. Indeed, without unqualified acceptance of the wrongdoing, suspension or exclusion from the profession would be inevitable”.
New decisions are appearing regularly and I encourage you to save the following link as a bookmark.
Read recent Tribunal decisions(external link) on the Justice website.
