Avoiding Immigration Pitfalls: Expert Advice for NZ Veterinary Employers

Julie South [00:00:04]:
Welcome to Veterinary Voices episode 204. I'm your show host, Julie south. With listeners in 1400 cities around the world, Veterinary Voices celebrates all that's great about working in New Zealand's veterinary industry. You can find back copies at VeterinaryVoices.NZ. Here at the bottom of the world in New Zealand, we have a really well developed sense of DIY. We're used to doing things ourselves. However, just because we can doesn't necessarily mean that we always should. There are lots of really good reasons for leaving some jobs to the professionals, like recruitment.

Julie South [00:00:51]:
Today's episode, though, isn't about recruitment, it's about why it's important to use a license immigration consultants when you're hiring overseas veterinary professionals known as migrants into your place of work. This is the second part of the chat that I've had recently with Catherine Neazor Brady of Neazor Brady Immigration Consultants.

Last week in episode 203 we covered who pays for what, what practice managers and HR managers need to do to ensure that they don't totally screw up their immigration New Zealand job check process and what it's okay to talk about when it comes to matters immigration when you're not a New Zealand licensed adviser. Today we're looking at some of the traps that HR managers and practice managers can find themselves caught up in when they decide to DIY their own employer applications, some of the recent law changes and I what job tokens are. If you haven't listened to last week's chat yet, episode 203, I will put links to that for you in the show notes of where you're listening to this episode so you can make sure that you're up with all things immigration in New Zealand and how you might be affected as an employer hiring overseas vets and nurses. Veterinary voices is brought to you by vet staff, New Zealand's only recruitment agency specialising in helping veterinary professionals find jobs that they're excited about going to on Monday mornings in Kiwi vet clinics. Check out Vetstaff dot co dot NZ now if this is your first time tuning in. Catherine Neazor Brady is a New Zealand licensed immigration advisor.

Julie South [00:02:48]:
She has over 20 years of experience working with New Zealand employers in the immigration and HR space. As a partner at Nesa Brady, she specialises in providing international recruitment, immigration and resettlement services to New Zealand employers. Neza Brady are the immigration consultants that vet staff recommends for getting all New Zealand immigration matters right. We're picking up here from last week's chat where I asked Catherine about the possible pitfalls, tripwires and landmines. Hr and practice managers need to know about and then how they can avoid wasting their time and money by diying their own Immigration New Zealand paperwork incorrectly. What land mines or tripwires are potentially.

Julie South [00:03:44]:
Out there for employers? Because, you know, New Zealand, Australia, but New Zealand is very much a diy nation.

Julie South [00:03:54]:
We can do our own recruitment. Don't need you, Julie.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:03:58]:
And maybe some of them think we can do our own immigration paperwork.

Julie South [00:04:03]:
Don't need you, Catherine. We can fill out all the forms.

Julie South [00:04:07]:
That you can fill out. Thank you very much. How might they trip themselves up? Because they don't know what they don't know.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:04:15]:
Yeah, and we see quite a few issues that come up repeatedly, particularly with bigger business groups. So accreditation is actually per New Zealand business number or per limited liability company or partnership, and quite often in a big group it might be operating under the same brand name, but they might have lots of different entities within that group. And what I've seen before is that employers assume because one company in the group is accredited, that means that they're all accredited and they can all sponsor migrant workers and they don't realise that it's only that particular company in that particular clinic location who's even got the right to make a job check application or hire someone on a work visa or sponsor a residence application. So each business entity needs its own individual accreditation. So that's the first step. Then, once they've done that, immigration has got particular requirements for job checks. So as we talked about before, for vets, it means that you're looking for a vet who's got registration with a New Zealand veterinary Council. That's fine, but where it's a position that has to be advertised like a vet nurse, there's a lot of things that have to be in the advertisement.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:05:26]:
They need to be really clear about the qualification, the work experience, the minimum and maximum hours of work to pay. And there's rules about how much you have to pay, there's rules about whether or not people can work overtime without being paid extra for it. In fact, they can't. And we quite often see employers who have a salary which might include working extra hours without extra pay. And then immigration looks at it further down the track when they're doing the job check or the visa application, and they want that person to be earning a guaranteed minimum. And if they work an extra hour a week or an hour a fortnight, that might tip their hourly rate below, so that's not going to get approved. So sometimes we find that employers know that each business needs to be accredited and they might have done that but they haven't done their advertising properly for the job check to be approved. And when it gets to immigration and they say no, that doesn't meet the requirements, we don't accept that.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:06:21]:
You've had a genuine look that met all of our requirements and you gave every opportunity to New Zealanders. They won't give them time to redo it while they're processing it. So then they might either get that application declined or they might decide to withdraw it and go away, restart their whole advertising process, have to run the ad with all the correct requirements for the specified amount of time when they're applying for a job check. It's not just their advertising. They have to submit their employment agreement in the job description, in normal job offer letter. And quite often we find these things in the employment agreements that need to be fixed up to meet immigration criteria. And then assuming they can get all through that, there's a processing time at immigration. So currently it's taking eight to ten weeks minimum for immigration to approve a job check.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:07:06]:
So actually, an employer who thinks they might want to recruit from overseas needs to be thinking quite far ahead. They need to be accredited, they need to have done their advertising for at least two weeks in a way that meets the immigration requirements and have all the other documents signed up, and then they need to factor in that there might be processing time at immigration. So for employers that might recruit regularly from overseas, a job check is actually approved for six months. So we work with companies that are planning ahead and thinking we should do our job checks. We know we're likely to recruit two nurses during this period. We'll make sure we've got all that ready. And then when they get the right candidate, they can move straight into being able to support a visa application, because otherwise what they might find is that the nurse is going to go, I'd rather have an employer who's got all their stuff sorted and I've got some security. And then they might lose that candidate if they're not on the ball.

Julie South [00:07:57]:
Are there any other trip hooks, tripwires.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:08:00]:
That the other thing? Well, there's the person's personal circumstances, if you're talking about an overseas worker. So all migrants have to meet health and character requirements. We have age limits. Depending on the person, they might want to bring dependent families with them. And the dependent family might have an age limit, not in veterinary, but we had another company that was bringing through a key employee that they had recruited directly and he got to the point of making his own visa application and they realised that their 20 year old child couldn't come with them. And, you know, so really, people, I would say, need to get some advice right at the beginning to make sure that they are eligible for what they think they're eligible for. And if they want to bring family members with them, a partner or children, they need to explore and make sure that those people are actually eligible as well.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:08:47]:
There is this thing called a job token. How does that work and what is it?

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:08:55]:
So when your employer has got accreditation, they've done their advertising and they apply for the job check. They tell immigration how many positions they want to recruit for and you can apply for more than one position to be approved from a single recruitment. If you've done your advertising and however many you tell immigration you want to hire, they will approve a job token. So if you've, let's say you're a busy practice and you might want three vets in the next six months, or you want two vets for sure, and there's a strong likelihood that you might want a third, you could apply for three job tokens in that single job check. When they get approved, they're valid for six months. And that, that means anybody that you want to hire in that next six months can use a job token to start their visa application. And you can't apply for a work visa in New Zealand anymore unless your employer has a job token for you. So in the old days, you could go online, just start your work visa application online, you could do it by yourself, you could pop in your job offer and a form from the employer and that was it.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:09:59]:
But it's physically impossible now to make a work visa application unless you have the job token because clicking on the link in the job token is what actually creates the application form in the immigration system.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:10:10]:
Thank you. We vet staff is often asked lots of immigration questions, which we absolutely, categorically decline to do. In New Zealand, there's legislation, there's laws and rules about who can talk immigration things.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:10:34]:
Yeah.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:10:35]:
Can you just explain that how that works, please, and what that means and why it is so.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:10:41]:
Yes. Okay. Under the Immigration Advisor Licensing act, only licensed immigration advisers or lawyers are able to give immigration advice. The only exceptions are people who work for Citizens Advice Bureau or MP's. Now, with a lawyer, it's actually any member of the lawyer's office because they have a different licensing regime, then they're not licensed under immigration adviser licensing. They are licensed under an act that governs lawyers. So any member of a lawyer's office can give immigration advice. But for immigration advisers.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:11:16]:
It's only the specific individual who has the immigration adviser license. And to have a licence, you have to have a bachelor degree, you have to do a one year graduate diploma course, and then you have to work under supervision of a fully licensed advisor for two years before you can get a full licence in your own right. And the government set up this regime in 2008 and it was done as a measure of consumer protection, really, because there had been people who'd received poor quality advice or fraudulent advice. And I think you guys are really wise, actually, in getting some immigration help on board, because if you're not licensed, you can point people to the immigration website, you can give them general, publicly available information, but you can't give them any specific tailored advice about their individual situation. So you couldn't look at them and say, oh, you've got this qualification, you can get that type of visa, or it will take you this amount of time, or, yes, your family can come, or that might be a problem. You can't give immigration advice to a lawyer, to an employer on how to do their job check and what needs to be in their job ad or their employment agreements and things like that. So some recruiters sort of fall into the trap of thinking they know quite a lot about it. They've been around for a while, so they can tell people what to do, they can tell them what forms to fill out and how to do it.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:12:34]:
Some in house recruiters also might feel that they know enough about it to be telling people that they are hiring, what to do and what documents to prepare and things. But it is actually against the law.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:12:44]:
I will not go there. It changes too fast. Yeah, for me.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:12:50]:
Before COVID we had around five significant immigration rule changes a year in New Zealand. And since COVID it's been 50 years to 60.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:12:59]:
Gosh, that's one a week? Just about, yeah.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:13:02]:
It's a lot to keep on top of. Yeah. And some of them are big and fast. So in April, when they made all the changes to the temporary work visa system, Sunday morning they took it offline. And when it came back at 04:00 in the afternoon, there were new rules and it was a surprise.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:13:17]:
And I'm presuming that Immigration New Zealand has a mass way of letting its license consultants know about these changes, or do you have to keep checking the website?

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:13:31]:
Every day we get direct notifications from immigration when there are changes. And when they brought in those big changes in April, they ran an ongoing series of webinars with licensed immigration advisers to talk about the changes, explain what they meant. We belong to three professional associations. And so our associations give feedback to immigration because quite often they're thinking about it from a policy internal point of view. And so when it comes to actual service delivery and the impact on real people, they don't necessarily, they can't always anticipate how that's going to roll out. And so sometimes we pass back feedback or questions, you know, right roles and they're not clear enough or these holes or things like that. And I think in the April changes was probably the biggest, if we can call it that. I think there were four or five webinars from immigration with licensed immigration advisors, and they kept on putting out faqs with clarifications and updates and they got to, oh, I think about 30 pages of faqs and clarifications and things.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:14:34]:
It was a very complicated rule change.

Julie South [00:14:39]:
I just want to interrupt this chat for a very brief, quick moment to share something important for clinics that are doing their own recruitment. Have you checked out vetclinicjobs.com yet? Now you probably already know and agree that traditional recruitment methods just aren't cutting it anymore, which means a different approach is necessary. This means that you need to differentiate and showcase what makes your clinic a great place to work. Vetclinicjobs.com is all about boosting your clinic's employer brand, which is not to be confused with your clinic's client brand. And wait, there's more. Vetclinicjobs.com is also very affordable. So please give your recruitment marketing the oomph that it needs and visit vet clinic jobs.com. now let's get back to today's show.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:15:46]:
Do they let you know in advance that changes are imminent?

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:15:51]:
Previously they used to the last two large major changes. They haven't. The fee increase has been signalled, though well in advance. People have had two months notice. So I think that just came in, really. I was at a meeting with the minister of immigration two weeks ago and she explained that what happened was when the accredited employer work visa system was implemented and the accreditation was implemented, there was a lot of pressure on the previous government to get people into New Zealand quickly following Covid, there was such a labor shortage, so they skipped some of the checks that were supposed to be implemented. They were approving employers and they were approving visas without really examining credentials and documents and things properly. And that resulted in lots of employers, unscrupulous employers, getting accreditation.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:16:40]:
Not in the veterinary sector, I have to add. But following on from that, there were fraudulent job offers and people that have come into New Zealand who aren't properly qualified or don't meet character requirements and things. And so they didn't want to give any prior notice of those particular changes. They just wanted to cut things off at the pass, stop things from getting worse and then kind of have a reset time. And there is another review going on of the accredited employer work visa that's going to be announced in September and they're going to be reviewing the residence category again next year. So they are now informing us of things that are coming up, but those particular changes that were announced without warning.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:17:20]:
That's why before we wrap up, this is the first of many ongoing chats that you and I are going to have. But just before we wrap this one up, is there anything that you specifically would like to say about what we've talked about? And then when you answer that, can you please let people know how they can get hold of you?

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:17:46]:
I guess I'd like to say that I've been a migrant myself. I immigrated to France and lived there for seven years and I've been through that whole struggle with changing countries, needing to resettle and visas and long term visas and trying to sort out what you're eligible for and going through that whole hassle and it really doesn't have to be that hard. And it really is worth talking to someone early on in the process so you can straighten out what you understand. And we had a vet nurse that approached us who had rung the immigration general advice number in the UK and they told her that she was on the green list and she'd qualify for residence, and that's not true. So immigration does have resources and information available, but they're call centre people, so they're not actually qualified licensed immigration advisers on the other end of the line. So it is worth reaching out to a professional to get some help and advice early on and you'll just find that the stress actually is really relieved by having an intermediary between you and immigration, because you can dump on us and we'll be your professional war. We're not going to dump on immigration. That's kind of my personal take on it and I'm really happy for people to email me, Katherine NASA, dot Bradyzerbrady, dot Co, dot NZ, or contact Julie at Vetstaff and she'll be happy to pass on any inquiries.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:19:05]:
And, you know, we're happy to talk to you. Whatever stage you're at in the journey, you don't have to be sitting there on a job offer. Right now.

Catherine Neazor Brady [00:19:10]:
Thank you. I will put all links to Catherine's email address and her website in the show notes of where you're listening right now to make it easy for you.

Julie South [00:19:25]:
I hope you found that interesting and helpful. I'll put Catherine's contact info at veterinaryvoices dot NZ for you. Check out episode 20 four. If you found this interesting, can I ask you to do Catherine and me a favour, please? One way of helping to spread this word is to use the power of the digital and the social media algorithms. That means I'm going to ask you to share this episode with your veterinary friends. Not only will it help get the word out about the importance of working with a licensed immigration consultant, it'll also help spread the celebratory word about how great it is to work in the veterinary industry in New Zealand. Thank you. Remember to come back next week because I'll be catching up with Christina Naden, who's a senior veterinary nursing lecturer at Otago Politech.

Julie South [00:20:20]:
She and I will be talking about the exciting new veterinary nursing qualification that's being rolled out next year in 2025. This means that from February 2025, Otago Polytech will offer a new two year New Zealand diploma in veterinary nursing in level six. This is the result of a large scale review of veterinary nursing programs. This new diploma in veterinary nursing is for those who don't hold the New Zealand level five certificate in animal technology, veterinary nursing assistant or the national Certificate in veterinary nursing. So I look forward to joining you then. You joining us next week. Until then, this is Julie south signing off and inviting you to go out there and be the most fantabulous version of you you can be. Until next week, Kaketi Ano.