The Minister for Immigration Iain Lees-Galloway had rejected the claim being made in recent media reports about a supposed institutional bias against Indian applicants within the Immigration New Zealand (INZ).

On Wednesday, May 30, Radio NZ had carried a report quoting an immigration adviser alleging that there was an institutional bias against Indian applicants in comparison to people of other ethnicities.

Immigration adviser, Arunima Dhingra, a director of Aims Global was quoted in that report as saying, “I think the overall picture that’s been painted is that, you know, ‘Indian nationality applications, let’s just go hard.”

The Minister brushed aside that claim as trivial and baseless.

“Of course, that is the claim of one immigration adviser, and I disagree,” Mr Galloway asserted.

“I think INZ has very clear processes and what they are doing is that they are assessing the merits of each application.

There is no doubt that we have seen the exploitation of employer-assisted visas and I can understand why INZ is looking closely at that category, so as to ensure there is no job inflation and migrant worker exploitation,” Mr Galloway said.

“In my view, the numbers reflect the number of applications for those visas across different ethnicities.

“It certainly does not reflect any different approach for any particular ethnicity,” the Minister said.

On being probed further about some latent perception, especially among those who deal with the immigration system on a daily basis and have similar experiences, the Minister said, “the report talks about employer-assisted visa, which we have identified as an area that is ripe through exploitation.”

The Indian Weekender further questioned the Minister about gradually diminishing avenues of investigations of decisions made by INZ and perceived as unfair by the applicants.

In response to which Minister asserted,” within the system, there are enough avenues to appeal against the decisions made.”

“I am confident that we have strong appeal processes with the Immigration Minister,” Mr Galloway said.

However, not everyone is fully convinced with the Minister’s denial.

Alastair McClymont, Principal Immigration Lawyer of McClymont & Associates said, “The Minister’s denial of institutional bias is expected.”

“Minister can only rely on what his officials tell him and the picture that his officials paint for him is far from reality,” Mr McClymont said. 

An industry expert speaking with the Indian Weekender on condition of anonymity said that the reason why employer-assisted visas have come under the scanner because INZ has allowed international students in the country at the first place taking advantage of waiver from the English-language test, which subsequently falls prey to exploitative employers.