Thursday, March 28, 2024

Avoid visa traps for migrants

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Make sure you check special visa conditions when considering immigrant dairy staff already living in New Zealand who apply for farm vacancies, recruitment consultant and immigration adviser with Fegan and Co, Marie Hunt, says.
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Just asking if the applicant holds a current visa wasn’t enough, Hunt warned.

The visa was often linked to a specific employer, job title or even location, and changing jobs once in NZ could require a new visa or an application for a variation on conditions.

She advised farmers to sight the applicant’s passport and the visa label so they could see for themselves what the conditions were and when the visa expired, to ensure they could legally work the whole season, even if they had been working in NZ for several years.

Family members’ visas could also be linked to the staff member so ensuring they were all in order would help the family avoid heartache.

Hunt said making sure all the legalities were met and the right documentation was included with any applications to Immigration NZ for visa renewals or changes wasn’t always a simple process.

She strongly recommended using a licensed immigration adviser.

‘Don’t give too much away initially on how you farm – the first part of the interview is to find out how they farm.’

“It’s about avoiding going right through the process, which can be time-consuming even when it does run smoothly, and then finding out there’s something not right with the application or information you’ve supplied. The application may get declined or delays run into months.”

Hunt also had a few pointers for interviewing immigrant applicants.

“It’s dangerous to generalise too much but try to ask open-ended questions rather than ones that could have yes or no answers. You can find some nationalities answer yes very easily.

“I ask them to step me through a typical day so it’s up to them to tell me what their daily tasks were in their previous employment and from that you can work out their experience. You can jump in and ask them to tell you more about a specific task.”

Ask them how they detected a cow had mastitis, for instance, or what they did once they suspected it, she said.

Like anyone, migrant staff could do their research and school up on the theory but that didn’t mean they had experience.

“So don’t give too much away initially on how you farm – the first part of the interview is to find out how they farm.”

When reference checking, ask previous employers about specific situations to gauge the applicant’s skill level. Check language skills by asking about times they didn’t understand an instruction and whether they did what they thought they’d heard, or if they asked for clarification.

Ask the employer what worked well when dealing with the staff member – did they like written instructions up on a board, working with other migrant staff or being more autonomous?

Find out what they found most challenging in terms of both the cultural and wellbeing aspects and the technical, onfarm operational issues.

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