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An Auckland company director plans to take Immigration New Zealand to the Human Rights Commission for denying him the right to employ the staff he says he needs to run his tiling business.
William Lee, director of Chuan Chi Tiling, said immigration officials had repeatedly rejected his applications to employ foreigners at his roof tiling company, instead insisting that he employ people from Work and Income.
But after two bad experiences with staff sent to him by the department - one went overseas in the middle of a project after a week at work and another's shoddy work left him with a $1200 repair bill - Mr Lee said he was not prepared to take any more chances.
He wants to employ a tiler from Thailand but here on a student visa who has worked for him part-time. Immigration has rejected the application because it was not satisfied that there were no New Zealand citizens or residents who could do the job.
"It is just ridiculous, if there are any good tilers around, they would be snapped up already. It's like telling rugby clubs they cannot engage good foreign players to play for them because there are Kiwis who can play rugby," said Mr Lee.
"What immigration is doing is just taking away my basic right to employ the people I need to run a successful business."
Ivy Salic, the director of another Auckland tiling company, Croatian Tilers, who has advertised in the Herald for tilers, confirmed that it was difficult to find good tilers.
Mr Lee, who came from Taiwan 19 years ago, has been running his company for nearly 10 years.
"By forcing me to keep employing incompetent people, what they are effectively doing is ruining my reputation, costing me money and running my business to the ground."
Under the Essential Skills Work Permit policy, an employer who wants to employ a foreign worker must first prove that he has made a genuine attempt to recruit suitable New Zealand citizens or residents, including advertising the position, ensuring the job description matches the skills and qualifications, and contracting an appropriate recruitment company.
Mike Christie, spokesman for the Department of Labour, which oversees immigration, said the policies were there to ensure that the employment of non-New Zealand citizens and residents did not undermine the wages and conditions of New Zealand workers.
"As part of the assessment, immigration conducts a labour market check to see if there are any suitable New Zealanders, and in some cases, a mandatory Work and Income check is required."
Mr Christie said people who were here as students, or those under the work-to-residence visa, who were not New Zealand citizens or residents, would be considered overseas workers.
But Mr Allan Hughes, of Kiwi Immigration Watch, said the rules were "looney and ridiculous".
"It gives the civil servants at two Government departments, who know nothing whatsoever about employment, some terrible powers that they are ill-equipped to use," said Mr Hughes, a former investigator at the department.
"By not letting employers get the people they need to run their business, Immigration New Zealand is effectively holding up industrial New Zealand."
