Applying for Essential Skill Work visa while waiting for SMC result

[winsome]

Thanks guys for pointing that out.

What would you suggest if you can't provide information for some of the question, specially:

"A6 How many current employees are New Zealand citizens or residence class visa holders?"
"A7 Has the business made anybody redundant, or been through a consultation with respect to potential
redundancies, in the past six months?"

I work for Ministry for Children and it's hard to answer these questions as this will require some effort to collect data from all over NZ. Just asking as I had to sit with our HR Team Leader to get INZ 1235 filled and I'll most probably end up doing the same again.

[JandM]

That form is intended for the employer to complete, not the applicant, so it's not surprising you find it difficult. Really, the HR department *should* be able to access the information, even if they end up with numbers for all the NZ Civil Service - the ministry is not a business, and things won't work for them in the same way as in the private sector. I imagine that when the CO sees where you work, it will be enough that there's been an attempt at an answer. INZ is an arm of the government, the same as your ministry, after all.

[ag]

Hi J and M,

How are redundancies considered by INZ?

My employer has about 1200 employees, and made two of them redundant over the covid period. This was clearly mentioned in my INZ1235. Was just curious if that might have any effect on my SMC RV outcome.

Cheers.

[Kelerei]

How are redundancies considered by INZ?

While the operational manual does not provide any specific guidance in this regard, I can think of some reasonable possibilities.

The obvious one is for INZ to consider the sustainability of your employment, since applicable immigration instructions (WK3.5 for Essential Skills, SM6.30 for SMC) state that the employment offered must be ongoing and sustainable, and large amounts of redundancies could have an adverse impact on this assessment, especially if INZ considers that the financial sustainability of the employer is in doubt.

A more remote possibility is for INZ to check that the employer is not retrenching New Zealand citizens and residents purely to make way for (presumably cheaper) foreign labour. This may seem far fetched to some, but when one considers that migrant exploitation was pretty much the only thing that the previous (and now deposed) Minister of Immigration focused on (to the detriment of pretty much everything else!), and also considers that this very issue is notorious in the United States' H1-B visa programme (which is roughly equivalent to NZ's Essential Skills Work Visa), it's not that far fetched after all. In the operational manual, this would probably be covered by the instructions requiring that the employer is compliant with employment and immigration law (WK3.15 for Essential Skills, SM6.35 for SMC).

All that said, given that redundancies are not explicitly mentioned in the operational manual, one can make the reasonable conclusion that INZ will not consider them on their own, but will consider them in conjunction with other factors to determine whether the employer has met its obligations under the relevant immigration instructions.

[JandM]

Agreed.

[winsome]

That form is intended for the employer to complete, not the applicant, so it's not surprising you find it difficult. Really, the HR department *should* be able to access the information, even if they end up with numbers for all the NZ Civil Service - the ministry is not a business, and things won't work for them in the same way as in the private sector. I imagine that when the CO sees where you work, it will be enough that there's been an attempt at an answer. INZ is an arm of the government, the same as your ministry, after all.

Cheers!