Visa threats are still the cheapest way to buy illegal labour

Another week, another case. A takeaway boss worked an employee 88 hours a week and threatened her visa, according to a Stuff report this week. Strip out the specifics and the pattern is depressingly familiar: punishing hours, a worker whose right to stay in the country depends on one employer, and the implied threat that complaining means a call to Immigration.

This is usually covered as a welfare story. It is also a competition story. Every operator who extracts unpaid hours from a visa-dependent worker is undercutting the café, contractor or orchard down the road that pays minimum wage, holiday pay and overtime properly. And the current penalty regime makes that trade look rational.

Same playbook, different shopfront

The levers rarely change. In 2024, the Employment Relations Authority ordered Hamilton’s Chilli India operator JDfoods and its owners to pay $99,697 in damages after three migrant workers were paid less than $8 an hour and told to pay $30,000 to stay in the country or face deportation. Then-ERA member Michael Loftus said it was the first such case he had seen in 19 years. The restaurant has since closed.

Earlier that year, workers at an Auckland eatery took refuge at a Sikh temple after alleging they were forced to work excessive hours for a fraction of the pay, with visa cancellation dangled whenever they asked about wages. Hospitality, different city, same mechanism.

It is not that workers do not know their rights. MBIE’s 2025 survey of more than 1,400 temporary migrants found 87% understand their employment rights well. Yet roughly a quarter remain at risk of exploitation, a segment marked by long hours, low trust and total reliance on the job for their visa. Knowing you are owed sick leave is worthless if asking for it costs you residency.

The maths favours the cheat

Here is the asymmetry that daily case coverage misses. Immigration New Zealand’s infringement scheme, which began in April 2024, carries fines of $1,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a company per breach, plus loss of accreditation and a six-month stand-down from sponsoring migrants. By 2025 the agency had issued 314 notices worth over $1 million in total.

Set that against the money on the table. In 2025, Citizens Advice Bureau enquiries showed illegal premiums for jobs were typically $15,000 and often $30,000 to $50,000 per worker. That is before counting the unpaid hours. A $3,000 fine against a five-figure gain per worker is not a deterrent. It is an overhead line.

Detection is also rising faster than enforcement capacity. MBIE’s 2024 regulatory impact statement recorded 3,925 migrant exploitation complaints in 2023/24 alone, while allegations of unlawful premiums jumped from 120 to 376 in a single year. The same document conceded the Immigration Act failed to capture premiums charged before employment starts, payments made offshore, or demands made by agents rather than employers. Those are not edge cases. They are how the scheme works.

Business is asking for a harder line

This is not a fight between employers and regulators. In 2025, Federated Farmers, Horticulture New Zealand, the Meat Industry Association, the Manufacturing Alliance and BusinessNZ all backed a crackdown, with BusinessNZ seeking sanctions for third parties who charge premiums and deceive the system. Zespri told the select committee it had seen premium-charging first-hand in its supply chain. Horticulture NZ warned enforcement would be extremely difficult where money changes hands offshore.

The industry is right to push. Legitimate operators carry the compliance cost of accreditation while the worst actors treat it as a licence to recruit captive labour.

The tie that binds

The harder question is structural. The Human Rights Commission’s 2024 review concluded AEWV policy settings were contributing to workers being exploited for profit. A 2024 analysis in The Conversation argued that tying legal status to one employer lets bad operators undercut legitimate businesses.

That argument should land with anyone who believes in functioning markets. A worker who can walk to a better employer disciplines a bad one far more efficiently than an inspector ever will. Greater visa portability, paired with fines scaled to the gain rather than a flat few thousand dollars, would do more for honest employers than another round of accreditation paperwork.

What happens next

The 88-hour takeaway case will not be the last. Until the penalty for exploiting a visa-dependent worker costs more than the profit from doing it, the incentive stays exactly where it is. Policymakers can keep counting infringement notices, or they can price the crime properly. The businesses doing it right are waiting to find out which.

Sources

• Stuff: Takeaway boss worked employee 88 hours week and threatened her visa (2026-10-26)
• RNZ: Extortion of immigrants exposed as Hamilton restaurant ordered to pay $99K in damages (2024-05-27)
• RNZ: Exploitation allegations at an Auckland restaurant reflect mammoth immigration challenge ahead (2024-03-12)
• Employment NZ: Temporary migrant workers and their employers – Snapshot 2025 (2025)
• Immigration NZ: Background and statistics on the Immigration Employment Infringement Scheme (2025-08-26)
• Newsroom: Immigration bill should go harder on exploitation, industry and advocates say (2025-09-29)
• MBIE: Regulatory Impact Statement, Strengthening migrant exploitation offences (2024-09-04)
• Te Kāhui Tika Tangata: The Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme, a human rights review (2024-08)
• The Conversation: In demand but disempowered, why low-skilled migrant workers face even worse exploitation under NZ’s new rules (2024-04-21)